Prologue
After watching Mammalia (2023) at the Berlinale two years ago, I hung around post-screening and ended up acquainting its director and co-writer Sebastian Mihăilescu. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch, even discussing potential film projects together. So, full disclosure: I’m a fan, but I’ll do my best to stay objective (and probably fail).
If you recall, I enjoyed the fantastical visuals of Mammalia and even managed to emotionally embrace its peculiar a-narrative, almost a-thematic structure. Not many people turned out to be in this boat, but Mammalia remains one of those movies that will aggressively split its viewers.
This movie
Turns out (hah), there are many paths to achieving the fantastical in cinema. Sometimes, you spend a lot of money and make things go boom. Other times, you spend a lot of money and make a chimpanzee sing popular songs from the 90s and 00s. And on probably many more occasions, with much less visibility, you explore ways of telling a story and framing a character. Vampiru’ Zombi does not fall in the first two categories.
It starts out by telling us about Cătălina and her childhood dreams. These feature characters kidnapped by vampires or marrying vampires and various fatal outcomes at one point or another. Cătălina wants to reenact them as a movie with a curious guy who goes by the name of Marchizu’, a (former) musician of the early post-communist rock scene of Romania. Or maybe they’re there to film a music video with the guy? Together with Roberta, who is to play Cătălina’s oneiric alter-ego, the three get to know each other in Marchizu’s apartment. Kind of.
This is the frame for what is otherwise a movie that isn’t easy to label. It ensconces itself as art-house, where all things without labels snugly fit, but behind its unorthodoxy lies a relatable tale: a young woman, grown up without her father, manifesting him in various ways, looking for solace and care where there’s only a dark void of reckless abandon. Or, as one might put it, a vampire-zombie.
The Real (Fiction)
Cătălina (Romaneț), Roberta (Antonie) and Marchizu’ (Mircea Bujoreanu) all play some version of themselves, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. It seems apparent that Marchizu’ in particular is authentic to his true self. His distinctive presence livens the movie, which takes care to establish him not only as a curious character, but as a person. „Every person is a character, more or less” he quips back. Imbuing the narrative with elements from his own backstory, which he is often very protective of, sets the scene for a climactic finale, retro style. As the closing title card announces the movie’s end, the fictional dissipates into mundane reality, traveling at its own pace, impervious to personal drama and turmoil.
The movie is at its liveliest when it introduces Marchizu’, while slowly weaving a story to make it more, let’s say, narrative-conforming. I’m not sure these scenes always gel in the best way, with some moments seeming performative, more than organic. I think there’s a rawness to it though, that will challenge the viewers in how they relate to semi-fictional characters.
At one point, Cătălina speaking to someone about her project asks whether they understand who Cătălina, the character, is. The answer is no, but that perhaps it’s better that way. On the one hand, I understand the argument, but on the other, I think this is in part why Vampiru’ Zombi feels like a surface-level treatment of its themes and characters. The film’s exploration of fatherhood and abandonment is poignant but might have benefited from deeper emotional stakes or a stronger focus on Cătălina’s internal journey.
So What?
That said, this is real guerrilla, independent film-making. Made with a skeleton-crew and an artistic vision, it improvises to its own rhythm. It has only had a premiere during last year’s Les Films des Cannes a Bucarest, but not much else, proving how difficult it is to break through with something different, that doesn’t fit obvious commercial or artistic niches, especially in the landscape of Romanian cinema.
I think the movie has serious merit, being visually captivating and tonally cohesive, while striking an emotional chord. This is no small feat, as Sebastian Mihăilescu’s style has a brash minimalism to it. His eye for setting the scene and creating an atmosphere, while juxtaposing the real and the fictional, had already been established in his debut work Pentru mine tu ești Ceaușescu (2021) [You Are Ceausescu to Me]. Here, unlike in Mammalia, the compact form suits its purpose and tells a story that finds truth in its roots, at the same time making it more accessible in spite of its eccentricities.
Swerving from grainy, over-saturated scenes to established shots, to vertical phone shots, to silent film pastiche, it’s all unusual, yet wholly captivating. Vampiru’ Zombi emerges as an original, distinctive piece of liminal cinema that embraces the chaos and yet comes out whole on the other side.
tributary stu 