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.
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.