{"id":72861,"date":"2025-08-10T18:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T18:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72861\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T18:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T18:16:07","slug":"radu-judes-profane-riff-on-vampire-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72861\/","title":{"rendered":"Radu Jude’s Profane Riff on Vampire Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFrom posthumous footage of a cloaked Bela Lugosi stumbling through graveyards in \u201cPlan 9 From Outer Space\u201d to David Niven appearing in blackface at the end of \u201cVampira,\u201d Dracula<\/a> has endured far worse over the years than anything director Radu Jude<\/a> can do to the character. But that doesn\u2019t stop the cinematic prankster from trying to make his epically sloppy, almost-three-hour \u201cDracula\u201d into the most exploitative interpretation of the character yet \u2014 a position Jude adopts on purpose.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter debuting his relatively respectable decline-of-Western-civilization satire \u201cKontinental \u201925\u201d at the Berlinale in February, the prolific Romanian auteur unleashes a second 2025 project at Locarno, where his rowdy \u201cDo Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World\u201d debuted two years earlier. An outrageous celebration of visual storytelling in all its forms, from TikTok to silent film, Jude\u2019s chaotic anti-art statement is the first \u201cDracula\u201d designed to suck.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you can hardly fault it for being an ecstatic, unruly mess of a movie \u2014 more than a dozen movies in one, really, as Jude appropriates, innovates and subverts as many cinematic traditions as possible. It may be called \u201cDracula,\u201d but this monster is built more like Frankenstein\u2019s. One moment, Jude is remixing F. W. Murnau\u2019s \u201cNosferatu\u201d with spam ads for porn sites; the next, he\u2019s chasing a rickety cabaret Dracula through the streets of Transylvania, while his vampy co-star snaps selfies for her OnlyFans account.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike most of Jude\u2019s work, the overstuffed result would be far more effective at half the length. And yet, anarchic excess makes it feel all the more punk. At 169 minutes, \u201cDracula\u201d may be a demanding sit, but it\u2019s never dull. And unlike so much so-called \u201ccontent,\u201d which is so beholden to formula that it may as well be generated by AI, Jude\u2019s gleefully tacky counter-attack \u2014 which incorporates AI in its amusingly mindless current state \u2014 proves wildly unpredictable.<\/p>\n

\n\tUntil now, Jude\u2019s profane political critiques haven\u2019t made it far beyond art houses or the festival circuit, to the extent that even dedicated cinephiles may not know his name, much less his confrontational oeuvre. In concept, \u201cDracula\u201d is meant to correct that by delivering to producers a \u201csuper-commercial\u201d project, one in which no idea is too crass for Jude\u2019s on-screen counterpart (Adonis Tan\u021ba, the hyper, attention-seeking young actor who first made his screen debut in \u201cKontinental \u201925\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tTan\u021ba plays a creatively blocked filmmaker who relies on AI to help conceive a Dracula movie loaded with everything audiences could want. He appears alone \u2014 with his e-tablet, on which is loaded Jude\u2019s imaginary \u201cDr. AI Judex 0.0\u201d software \u2014 in a monastic-looking cell, but it\u2019s easy to picture the room full of craven, Roger Corman-esque producers salivating at the prospect of \u201cnudity, sex, feelings, violence, car chases, lots of blood, jokes, gags, slapstick,\u201d with little or no concern for quality.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether you love or hate Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s extravagant take on \u201cBram Stoker\u2019s Dracula\u201d \u2014 which, like everything else born of the human imagination over the past century, has been hoovered up and analyzed by AI \u2014 at least \u201cThe Godfather\u201d director\u2019s high-kitsch adaptation committed to a bold unifying aesthetic. Jude\u2019s \u201cDracula\u201d looks amateurish and cheap by comparison, shot on crappy digital cameras in and around Transylvania, a region that now barely resembles the one the classic vampire once called home (which is sort of the point, as reflected in one segment, where a girl dressed as Vlad the Impaler visits the tourist trap his 15th-century residence has become).<\/p>\n

\n\tThese days, international festival movies typically open with a laughably long sequence of logos, featuring the dozen or more entities that co-funded the film. \u201cDracula\u201d offers in its place a litany of crudely animated AI images of the infamous Romanian count \u2014 16 in all \u2014 each of whom repeats the challenge, \u201cI am Vlad the Impaler, you can all suck my cock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Jude is following Hollywood\u2019s lead here in any way, it\u2019s not in any glossy, big-budget capacity (his aesthetic is as unpolished as ever), but more in the caustic, bite-the-hand-that-feeds sense demonstrated by \u201cThe Matrix Resurrections\u201d and \u201cJoker: Folie \u00e0 Deux,\u201d where the directors\u2019 resentment at being obliged to make such sequels becomes a kind of meta-textual joke, the cudgel with which they critique cinema itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tJude claims to have no special interest in Dracula, having agreed to make this film as a concession to his financiers (some of whom dropped out during production, further complicating the low-budget affair). Most of the film can still be made cheaply enough, with cardboard cut-outs taking the place of extras and amusingly artificial AI substituting for establishing shots and certain visual effects.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one sequence, inspired by the approximately minute-long Romanian-language scene in Coppola\u2019s \u201cDracula,\u201d Jude serves up a montage of graphic AI-generated orgy shots, featuring fused bodies, extra fingers and mutant genitals. Instead of being disappointed by the limitations of the technology, Jude curates the glitchiest results and employs them for comedic effect. The only thing remotely horrific in Jude\u2019s \u201cDracula\u201d is how far removed from our reality these AI images appear (but they will only get better as the technology advances).<\/p>\n

\n\tEmbracing \u2014 or at least engaging with \u2014 this early iteration of artificial intelligence feels like a radical act on Jude\u2019s part, since the industry is so clearly threatened by this technology. But then, doing so is consistent with the themes of his \u201cDracula,\u201d which considers the paradox that audiences derive more pleasure from \u201cbad\u201d art than good. Jude has never been accepted in official selection at Cannes, where such austere masterpieces of the Romanian New Wave as \u201cThe Death of Mr. Lazarescu\u201d and \u201c4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days\u201d were launched, but his films feel considerably more populist.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith references to Chaplin and Ceau\u0219escu, a dildo-centric folk tale (a sacrilegious riff on classic Romanian author Ion Creang\u0103) and an extended anti-capitalist critique of the vampire-like profiteers who exploit immigrant labor, \u201cDracula\u201d is practically drowning in ideas. It\u2019s a ripe text to be sure, but too much for anyone to take in with a single viewing. While \u201cDracula\u201d cements Jude as one of the world\u2019s most audacious filmmakers, he fails at that most fundamental of skills we expect of a director: the capacity to make a decision. From casting to cutting to where to place the camera, that\u2019s what directing comes down to, and here, Jude refuses, serving up every option at once.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Udo Kier, barfing up his insides for lack of virgin blood in Andy Warhol\u2019s good-bad \u201cBlood for Dracula\u201d (or Tan\u021ba, who has a strange tic of hocking phlegm on camera), the movie gorges on all that is impure and barfs it back up for our benefit. Still curious? Don\u2019t say you weren\u2019t warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From posthumous footage of a cloaked Bela Lugosi stumbling through graveyards in \u201cPlan 9 From Outer Space\u201d to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[49409,88,44825,206,49410],"class_list":["post-72861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-dracula","tag-entertainment","tag-locarno-film-festival","tag-movies","tag-radu-jude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}