Russian Supernatural Horror. Okay, this is a vampire movie that has some cool moments in it, and was done for an amazingly small amount of money 4.2 million. It looks almost as big as Underworld 2. I was amazed. It is a very convoluted and detailed story about the forces of lightness and forces of darkness held in balance through the ages, based on some ancient truce made by the two warring kings of each side. The emphasis is on choice, and how everyone must choose for themselves which side to be on, and these forces cannot violate that free will. It is a Manichean Dualistic worldview that understands spiritual reality as two equally opposing forces in a perpetual struggle for the souls of mankind.
And there is a prophecy of a Gnostic redeemer who will come one day and choose one of the sides, who will it be? So, very Gnostic. And quite frankly, it was a bit too esoteric and detailed for me to follow. But there are some very cool things that happen in it. For instance, the very beginning starts out with a young man going to an old woman in present day to put a curse on his unfaithful girlfriend pregnant with another man’s child. This lady turns out to be a modern day witch, and it’s all very Jean-Pierre Jeunet style in its gothic quirkiness. Very interesting characters who are not all beautiful, as in Underworld. I like that about foreign films.
So anyway, this old lady starts to curse the woman and her unborn child after telling him it is a “sin” to kill the unborn. So, then the guy yells stop because he can’t bring himself to do it, and these spirit beings stop her from clapping her hands to finish the curse and the baby is safe.
So, this guy goes on to join the forces of light. Meanwhile, the forces of darkness are depicted as vampires. So by the time the hero has to help this kid twelve years later who is an “Other,” that is, he is sensitive to the spirit realm, the hero comes to realize that the kid is his own child. The girlfriend was not pregnant with another man’s child, but with his own! But for some convoluted reason the hero is deceived into thinking he must kill the kid for the good, and is stopped in mid stride by the bad guy. Then the child asks him why was he trying to kill him, and the hero replies that he would never try to kill him. To which, the child replies that he did try to kill him, TWELVE YEARS AGO when he used the witch to curse his unborn child. This desire to kill his own child is what causes the child to go to the forces of darkness instead of light. And that, my friends, is a VERY powerful life affirming story. Three cheers for the Russians!