... Delightfully skewed. The movie puts the dead in deadpan.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 19, 2024

The Vourdalak is a quirky, slightly bizarre, Gothic comedy. The artistic exploration of Gothic horror makes this film a splendid and strange surprise.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 15, 2024

A delirious and oddly agreeable stopover.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 10, 2024

Sparse, tense, and claustrophobic, if you can get past the spooky puppet, The Vourdalak is a solid addition to cinema’s eternally bulging vampire canon.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 6, 2024

This story is pulled from oral myths and superstition where the undead walk in the daylight, and the signs of sickness aren’t silver and mirrors, but saliva and shadows.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 3, 2024

Adds to an already strong year for horror with creative visuals and an ominous sense of gloom that nearly rivals that of Longlegs.

| Original Score: B | Aug 16, 2024

It’s an experience where the humor and the horror go hand-in-hand, making for a hidden gem that, even as it requires wiping away some blood, proves to be a vibrant vision to get lost in.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 26, 2024

Flippant humor slowly gives way to an unavoidable onslaught of anxiety that overwhelmed my senses, leading to haunting final images I will uncomfortably savor for quite some time.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 26, 2024

The Vourdalak, a terrifying journey into the heart of familial darkness. This frightening creature brings death and destruction to those he loves most and lurks in the shadows of his children’s dreams.

| Original Score: B | Jul 20, 2024

It’s trim, tart, funny and quite beautiful in its own right.

| Jul 19, 2024

By taking risks “The Vourdalak” brings some fresh blood to the genre....The juxtaposition of dark humor and bracing violence, melded with a gruesomely erotic charge near the close, makes for a hauntingly unsettling brew.

| Original Score: B | Jul 18, 2024

A shrewdly produced period piece that captures the intimate story of a simple narrative.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 15, 2024

If you rush to the theater this weekend and head for “Longlegs” (2024), you may be disappointed, but “The Vourdalak” is a guaranteed good time with a bleak narrative, a colorful sheen and an economical ninety-minute run time.

| Jul 14, 2024

Director Adrien Beau chose to go with an elaborate, life-size rod puppet creation that is entirely creepy and effective in its own right. This is the sort of detail that can make or break the already stylish approach to this story.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 11, 2024

Gorcha is, in the context of the film, a thing which should not be; by portraying him as a puppet, Beau ingeniously transfers that feeling to the viewer.

| Jul 11, 2024

The Vourdalak is not only an example, it’s a critique. And it’s not only a critique, it’s an emotional expansion of decades of LGBTQ subtext in genre. I love this film, and can’t wait to see what Beau does next.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 5, 2024

It’s the kind of enjoyably weird movie you keep in your back pocket to whip out for unsuspecting friends who you know are already on its wavelength. In other words, it’s a ready-made cult classic.

| Jul 5, 2024

In The Vourdalak, French filmmaker Adrien Beau reimagines the vampiric creature from Slavic folklore as a vessel for inherited trauma.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 3, 2024

You’re not likely to stumble upon another movie that smashes together the same bizarre list of ingredients quite like the weird and wild and wonderful The Vourdalak does... triumphantly strange... this movie sets quite the scene indeed.

| Jul 3, 2024

The Vourdalak is more than a gimmick—the eponymous creature is a life-sized puppet voiced by director and co-writer Adrien Beau—it’s a dark, and at times darkly funny, exploration of how love can be a real horror, akin to an infection such as vampirism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 2, 2024