Mubi Monday: Bloodsuckers (2021)

Count Dracula was, just to remind you, a selfish and rich monster who would feed from others without much fear of actually being caught and punished by anyone. He enslaved people to do some of his dirty work, lounged around in his massive home, and eventually set his sights on a trip to another country where he hoped to reassert himself as a well-to-do member of society and convince a young woman to be his new love. Basically, he is a typical rich person used to getting his own way.

Which is something made all the more obvious in Bloodsuckers (AKA Bloodsuckers - A Marxist Vampire Comedy), a mix of comedy and dark drama that feels light and fun until it strongly underlines every main point being made in the final act.

 

Writer-director Julian Radlmaier is no stranger to this kind of content, despite not being the first person you would think of to helm a "vampire" movie. He enjoys using cinema to explore philosophy and politics, and fans of his work will already have a good idea of what to expect from this, which is actually (and surprisingly) only his second full feature.

The main characters are Octavia (Lilith Stangenberg), her manservant Jakob (Alexander Herbst), and a man named Ljowushka (Alexandre Koberidze). All three of these people go through different journeys that show how they can work as both prey and prefator, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in much more subtle ways. 

The visuals here are fine, although very few scenes work as effectively as they could in blending the vampire motifs into the everyday details of the struggles being depicted, and the acting from everyone is in line with the straightforward approach to the material that Radlmaier clearly prefers. Stangenberg has enough presence to make her character feel worthy of the people who fuss around her and aim to keep her happy, Herbst is entertainingly pained throughout, and Koberidze is part everyman and part fraudtser, lying about himself in ways that are only slight exaggerations of how people often lie about themselves every day.

Although I enjoyed this intermittently, it's not the best work from Radlmaier. As subjective as it is, the comedy didn't work for me as often as I wanted it to, which was made all the more notable during the few times when it really DID work. And I'll admit that I wanted to see some more moments of literal vampirism mixed in with the commentary. That might just show that I am not as smart or savvy as Radlmaier's intended main viewership, or it might show that he needs to work on making the most of any premise that can provide equal parts talking points and cinematic entertainment. Let's face it, it's probably the former.

 

5/10

 

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