"Vampyr" is one of those films where a helpful, normal guy stumbles upon a terrible predicament and can't find it in his/her heart to abandon the situation. It makes for the scenery and plot to be locked in. That is, until the end, where he runs away with the girl, leaving behind the horror related mishaps that had tormented them not but awhile ago. I'm going to try my best to review this film without my opinions being altered by popular consensus. Here we go.
This was a really good movie, but not by conventional horror film standards. There are no jump scares, or gruesome effects, or even allot blood (even though this is a vampire movie). This film scares you in a different way, through the unknown. Because everyone knows that the scariest things, are the ones that you cannot even seeeeeee......... And it's true! When your left in the dark, you are constricted to only four sensory perceptions! And with a vampire going around feasting only on a diet of fresh neck, it makes it even more frightening if you can't see who it is. To quote Scream, "THERE IS A VERY SIMPLE SYSTEM: EVERYONE'S A SUSPECT!" And that's especially accurate if you can't even see the guy.So many aspects about this film are top notch. The acting is mature and serious, and there is allot of eerie scenery to work with. Almost every scene that takes place out side of the house is shot from inside the house, to give you this closed of, mysterious, and overall unsettling effect. And it's not like this film has to, because there is so much detail with the structure, furniture, and decor of the house. Everything about it is wonderfully frightening, without boasting about it. In, "Psycho," there was a different way of executing this. In that film, the inn, looked like an inn. It didn't seem as though anything dramatic was going on in there, and Norman Bates also seemed like a generous and smart person. It lures you in, the inn symbolizing a beacon of hope in the dark outside world. But it is the opinion of the customer whether or not the world outside is dark, and whether or not he/she chooses to go into the beacon, tells something about their character. But when they enter the premise, they are greeted with the very problem they have chosen to evade. I suppose it means something like that.
One aspect that I really appreciated from this film was the shadows. They really mystified me to whether or not some of the characters were actual humans. There is one scene where you see a man sitting down, and his shadow seemed to be moving around. Then, when the shadow was finished, it sat down too, thus aligning it with the human. Then the human stood up with the shadow and walked out of the shot. It was really cool! I'm still trying to figure out how they did that. I would not say that this is the greatest horror film ever made. However, it is a contender for attaining such a title. It says allot about a film when you don't even see any glimpse of the killer, but enjoy it even more than if you had. It mixes fiction and reality so well that you could be content looking at it either way. There is a balance of mature, and serious acting, with a (seemingly) "historical" plot. You can believe that it has happened, especially with excerpts from a book being told to the viewer in the hope of them learning little by little to what it is the residents of the house are up against. It's a good mystery film, a good horror film, has great suspense, and stupendous cinematic elements. I liked it.
9.6/10
Next Review: Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923
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