Strigoi
Strigoi
| 01 November 2009 (USA)
Strigoi Trailers

When the villagers killed Constantin Tirescu, they thought it was justice. Vlad Cozma thinks it was murder. Now, Constantin thinks pickles might go nice with blood.

Reviews
Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.
Konterr Brilliant and touching
Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Paul Magne Haakonsen As much as I enjoy movies that involve the undead in all their shapes, forms and sizes, then "Strigoi: The Undead" just didn't appeal to me, and I ended up giving up on it shortly after 45 minutes into the movie.Why didn't the movie appeal to me? Simply because it was so incredibly slow paced, so horribly, horribly slow paced. Nothing much had happened 45 minutes into the movie, so my interest was smothered and terminated. It is rare that I stumble upon a movie this slow paced. It was just awful.It should be said that the acting in "Strigoi: The Undead" was actually quite good. And it is always nice to see brand new faces and talents in a movie. Just a shame that they suffered under a boring script and a lack of storytelling talent at the hand of director Faye Jackson.All in all, this is a boring movie which isn't worth the time, effort and most importantly of all not worth your money.
alrc2007-847-854729 I don't know where one of the reviewers got that the accents were bad/fake/not genuine, however these ARE Romanian actors, speaking English with Romanian accents. If you are used to English accents from Americans, then of course you may be suffering under illusions about how people in the real world Eastern Europe truly speak English.The film is amusing, well made, interesting and surprising. I enjoyed it quite well. Acting was on par with this sort of indie film, and in most cases, believable. Effects were not computer generated, however the story moved a bit slowly. I certainly enjoyed the beautiful countryside of Romania and reminded me of the time I visited.
exanastonia I can understand how some might find this movie slow or dull. I can see how someone expecting a traditional vampire movie would be disappointed. But this is a movie that asks to be taken on its own terms. If you're willing to go where it takes you, it's absolutely entertaining.No spoilers here, except to say as others have that it's not a standard vampire movie in any respect. (For me, that's a plus. I'm a lifelong horror fan, but the older I get, the more I appreciate subtlety; and Strigoi is certainly subtle.) I concur with other reviewers who say it's a tough movie to categorize in terms of genre; I found it dryly funny, but I wouldn't call it a comedy. Neither is it a horror movie in any conventional sense. There's a touch of magic realism in that the vampires are not so much literal entities as they are metaphors for a past that refuses to die - understandable, since the movie is very firmly located in modern Romania.That specificity of time and place is one of my favorite aspects of the film. While I don't have direct personal experience of Romania, I do have family from other parts of Eastern Europe, and the film's casual mix of modernity and tradition ring true for me. So do the characters' droll humor and level of comfort with death and the unknown, all of which is met with a shrug, a wink, and/or a raised glass. The script is excellent and captures the banter between families who have known each other not only for a lifetime, but for generations.The acting, too, is strong. Cătălin Paraschiv as the protagonist, Vlad, scarcely alters his voice or facial expressions throughout the film but still manages to convey a wide range of emotions and remains sympathetic. The ensemble cast is endearing, particularly the local policeman (who speculates that a local landowner ought to consider growing marijuana, because it's natural and never hurt anybody) and the mourners keeping vigil over the body of a local patriarch to ensure he doesn't become strigoi. The Romanian accents are thick but intelligible, and it's clear that everyone's having a good time with the material.Did I mention the music? The music's great. I wasn't expecting to enjoy Strigoi anywhere near as much as I did, so I'm happy to pass along a recommendation in the hopes that someone else will find the film entertaining as well.
Thomas Aitken 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.