Strigoi (2009)

NOT a vampire film. That's the first and most important fact you should know before watching. Second, it's a rather dry if not dull film that sparkles with just enough charisma to pull off an above average effort. The acting is fine, in fact it's pretty good. Yes, they are Romanians speaking in English but their accents are not hard to comprehend. At least I had no problem following them. This isn't a knee slapper type of comedy. I can't imagine the personality that would label this a comedy to be honest. It's just not funny. Amusing? Sure. Funny? I didn't laugh once. I smiled...the cast has a sort of neurotic charm that fuels your desire to reach the end. Don't watch it expecting to unearth a great vampire movie that no one else has seen. Watch it expecting a murder mystery with Romanian vampire mythology thrown in the mix as a sort of seasoning. Lower your expectations created by a few people that are raising an unrealistic bar and you might enjoy it more then others. Or you might be bored stiff. It's just that type of movie.

It is well written, well directed, and well acted.This isn't a knee slapper. It isn't an in your face "Boo!" fest. It doesn't make your skin crawl like a Hannibal Lector. It isn't a Sherlock Holmes mystery.But its wry and amusing. There are scenes so odd in light of the circumstances that they stand out as surreal and yet right for some reason. The whole movie revolves around getting to the bottom of why or what this Strigoi vampire nonsense is all about.While set in Romania the language is English and well spoken. As a native English speaker it is easy to follow along while still getting the sense of being in a foreign world -- a place where the undead still have their wrongful place in the world.

I rented this film based on all the glowing quotes from movie critics that were plastered all over the DVD cover - my experience is one which proves the old adage that not everything you read in print should be taken at face value.This film started out really well, good pacing, interesting style, great deadpan black humor in an eccentric village - basically like Waking Ned Divine, except this time it was Romania, not Ireland, and there were vampires.However, after about 30 minutes the film became bogged down, and all of a sudden the pacing slowed to a crawl, the humor and gags started to become monotonous, and the plot suddenly seemed to consist of the lead character going back and forth from one part of the village to another in an effort to try and unravel the mystery - in the end he seemed to spend more time pointlessly moving about than the plot did.I really liked the first 20 minutes of this film, so I was absolutely disappointed when it fell off the pace and lost its way, becoming mired in its own overly complicated plot and overly-repetitive ethnic gags.All they needed to do here was take a leaf out of the script writing playbook that gave us Waking Ned Divine and this would have been a classic plot driven black comedy about an eccentric village that kept you hooked by progressing the story beyond that of a mere land dispute, or bogging it down in local politics to the point of losing its universal appeal and themes.It's not often that a movie snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, but this was definitely one of those cases - everything was started right, the technical aspects were excellent, acting good, but it never managed to bring it all home or maintain the initial hook of the first 20 minutes.

Well this came as a welcome surprise ... Well written ... Well acted ... Well shot ... And with a heart ... Such a rarity in "cinema" these days OK ... So it is low budget and there aren't planets exploding and people turning into beasts of some sort or another... Oh hold on... There are beasts sort of ... But much more subtly :)) Seeing the hugely baroque churches hovering over the poor homes of the Romanian villagers is a very bizarre sight ... I've never been to Romania but this made it a place I'd definitely be interested in visiting I'm kind of hoping the strigoi part was fiction of course : )) Give this one a go ... Its well worth an evening of your time