Tag Archives: 2025

Capsules

CAPSULE: DRACULA (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Radu Jude

FEATURING: Adonis Tanta, Oana Maria Zaharia, Gabriel Spahiu

PLOT: A film director narrates the tale of a washed- up actor playing Dracula, while AI- crafted sketches inspired by the vampire myth play as interludes.

Still from Dracula (2025)

COMMENTS: When a movie starts with shots of the historical Dracula—also known as Vlad the Impaler—clearly made by AI, you know you are in for a treat. Romanian director Radu Jude, one of the most uncompromising voices in European cinema today, proves once again his willingness to be weird and sarcastic. Dracula is a spiritual successor to some of his most controversial works, especially the infamous Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021).

A film director narrates the tale of an actor performing Dracula through a structure somewhere in between sex-show and participatory theater. Jude intersperses a plethora of interludes among this story as the in-film director occasionally asks AI for inspiration and help in creating embedded narratives. This complex form of tales-within-tales recall everything from “The Arabian Nights” to ambitious cinematic projects like Mariano Llinás’ colossal La Flor (2018).

Dracula is a Frankenstein of a movie, a pastiche of vastly different genres and styles. There are adaptations of Romanian vampire tales, love stories set in different time periods, a hyper-stylized farce about a farmer harvesting cocks, a vulgar song, and ads inspired by Nosferatu (1922). Some sketches place Dracula in contemporary Romania to comment on the re-emergence of extreme right and nationalism, while another uses the vampire as an allegory for bloodsucking capitalism, in the vein of Julian Radlmaier’s Blutsauger (2021).  There is even a realistic slice-of-life episode towards the end.

Jude works here with a wide range of styles, from grim realism to surrealism. Some things remain constant, however. The acting is mostly over-the-top with rapid dialogues, as if we were watching a variety show. Jude applies Brechtian techniques, with fourth wall breaks reminding us of the artificiality of everything portrayed here. The theatrical props and AI shots further the theme. Dracula is Jude’s most ambitious work yet, a cinematic mammoth lasting almost three hours and an exemplary labyrinth of narrative complexity.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Jude combines A.I., dark humor, tongue-in-cheek humor and unhinged zaniness that creates a surreal experience that might be enjoyed more while drunk or high.”–Avi Offer, The NYC Movie Guru (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OBEX (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Albert Birney

FEATURING: Albert Birney, ,

PLOT: Conor, a gentle shut-in, must navigate the dangerous world of a computer game when it kidnaps his dog.

Still from Obex (2025)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Strange cicadan adversaries, point-and-click logic, and a celebratory eccentricity make OBEX an obvious odd-ball. Bonus points for being wholesome in its weirdness.

COMMENTS: 1987 was a year for cicadas. Billions of them globally, and who knows how many thousands emerging from their slumber to provide Baltimore a whirring, chirping Summer soundtrack. Reason enough to stay indoors—though left to his own device, Conor would do so anyway: he is a shut-in. For reasons only hinted at during Albert Birney’s low-key adventure film, OBEX, Conor only leaves his property when his dog Sandy is stolen by the the demon Ixaroth and spirited away to the mysterious land of Obex.

“Spirited away” may not be the correct phrase. Birney’s film exists at a strange intersection between (period) technology and classical fantasy, and Sandy’s plight is revealed through the monitor of ye olde Macintosh computer. Conor’s life, quiet and regular, relies on (then) state of the art home computers. His income is earned via text art portraits—lines and lines of punctuation forming a Pointalist-style image—and he ends the day with one or more machines running with midi-ambient or midi-karaoke music before bedtime. He lives alone with his dog, and his computers, and his stack of three cathode-ray televisions which, except on movie nights, all play different channels in the background. And every night he dreams about aimlessly driving his deceased mother in her old car.

The coziness of Conor’s space couldn’t be more different than the vast fields and forests of Obex, which our determined hero explores in the film’s second half. He encounters human-sized bug monsters, a kindly shopkeeper (a hold-over from his corporeal life, Maria, who does Conor’s grocery shopping every Wednesday), and makes a new friend out of an old one: an RCA Victor Model 14S774G—but call him “Victor.” His travels with Victor bring him to an automobile incongruously parked in the middle of an open stretch of greenery, its keys tucked in the visor, just like where Conor’s mother stored them. Other connections connect as well, and while we’re fairly sure we’re in the benighted land of Obex, we are almost certainly somewhere more allegorical as well.

From his small home to the wilds of Obex and into the heart of Ixaroth’s nightmare realm, Birney recounts Conor’s Quest (complete with a hat lifted, I swear, from King’s Quest) with heart, flourish, and more than a few sound-and-sight jests. And the film is more than just nostalgia, although there is plenty of that. OBEX is an unlikely adventure, an eccentric character study, and, to borrow another director’s observation, an unexpectedly gentle film. Capturing its combination of mirth, melancholy, innocence, and self-awareness in words is difficult—though perhaps the complimentary side of “quaint” might do. Cinematographer (and script co-writer) captures the television-feel to a T, and having seen OBEX first on the big screen and recently on my laptop, it felt “right” in both sizes.

That’s what this is: a big adventure that fits right in your pocket, ready for when the whirring and chirping swarm of humdrum life is poised to overwhelm you.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Shades of David Lynch and Wes Craven merged with Birney’s own idiosyncratic Baltimore sensibilities…  Better still, for as decidedly weird as OBEX intends to be, there’s a rational, coherent center to it all.”–Chad Collins, Dread Central (festival screening)

366 Underground

CAPSULE: HOWLER (2025)

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Howler is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Richard Bailey

FEATURING: , , Abel Flores, Blake Hackler, Laura Martinez

PLOT: A grisly hunter threatens the woods as Leni, an attuned poet, prepares to accept a life-changing award.

Still from Howler (2025)

COMMENTS:

“Your life is going to change.”

—”How do you mean that?”

“Oh, not in the sense you might hope.”

This exchange is intended more as a kindly tip-off than as a threat, but, as with most wisdom, it is not well received. The words here are talismanic; but then, in a way—and especially to a poet—all words are. Words are simultaneously weighty and evanescent. They are everywhere, and nowhere. And, from my vague understanding, one primary task of a poet is to nail them down and convey them—at least in their fleeting significance.

Howler is another meditation from director Richard Bailey on the nature of communication, perception, and the intersection of reality and unreality. Two earthly plot lines anchor the discourse: one concerning a poet, the other concerning the “grisly hunter” mentioned prior. But as per usual form, Richard Bailey the (word) poet and Richard Bailey the (image) poet are inseparable. Time and again the screen is just non-human sound and natural imagery. A triptych of floating blossoms recurs throughout as punctuation between conversational musings on vengeance, serenity, annihilation, and regrowth.

A poet’s lot is often an unhappy one,  toiling away at building spiritual insight using words, punctuation, and line breaks. But the joy it can bring, even to just one witness, makes their ordeal worth the sacrifices. Bailey dissects his vocation and that of his peers, through the lens of natural and human friction and coexistence. The ominous figure of the hunter is, I’d wager, symbolic: though I could not commit as to what. Perhaps he is our path toward ruination of self and surroundings; perhaps he is more tragic than malevolent.

There is much to misunderstand about humans and humanity. With Howler, Bailey takes another stab at capturing truth essence through the primitive tools of language, image, and sound.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Howler is not a horror film, despite what the opening 3 minutes suggest. While that will undoubtedly disappoint horror hounds, stick with it. The story is interesting, the characters engaging, and the direction dreamy.” — Bobby LePire, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: RABBIT TRAP (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Bryn Chainey

FEATURING: Dev Patel, Rosy McEwen, Jade Croot

PLOT: In the Welsh countryside, the lives of a musician and sound engineer are interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child imbued with supernatural awareness.

Still from Rabbit Trap (2025)

COMMENTS: They emerge from the Welsh countryside, bearing questions and a rabbit offering. They know the purpose of plants and the dangers they can keep at bay—or entice. They coming knocking with joy, and with fervor. They wonder at a strange man in his 30s, who apologizes a lot even while he may tackle an unsuspecting kid.

The film is set in the mid-1970s. The man is Darcy Davenport (Dev Patel), a sound engineer married to underground music sensation Daphne. For reasons omitted, they’re deeply out of the way of any neighbors, exploring each other, sonic phenomena, and melancholia. Darcy spends his days wandering about with his boom mic and recorder in hand; Daphne futzes around with microphones, synthesizers, and oscilloscopes, trying to craft something interesting. Enter small child. This child, the “they” mentioned above, is ambiguous in a number of ways. They’re boyish, girlish, a bit unearthly—indeed, no other pronoun would suit them, and perhaps no proper noun, either, as they never reveal their name. Events turn strange as the group—in varying ones, pairs, and trios—explore sounds, visions, faerie rings, and even more terrible dangers of the woodland.

The denouement suggests we may have witnessed a metaphor, but in the spirit of the film’s general turbidity, I will merely mention that it is there, and that I shan’t be scrutinizing events further. Chainey has achieved something impressive through his story, as has Jade Croot with their performance: summoning a deep well of mystery, uneasiness, and candid emotion. The hazards of Nature where it straddles the veil are frightening and glorious, and Rabbit Trap‘s dangers should be approached with an open mind—and open ears.

 

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a vague but effectively unsettling slice of trip-folk horror about what happens when the world refuses to leave… Equal parts Ben Wheatley’s ‘In the Earth’ and Jerzy Skolomowski’s ‘The Shout,’ ‘Rabbit Trap’ is the sort of experience that could be better explained by certain mushrooms than even even the most detailed internet explainer. It’s definitely the sort of experience that’s best enjoyed by accepting those terms as soon as you can.”–David Ehrlich, IndieWire (contemporaneous)

Rabbit Trap [Blu-ray]

Rabbit Trap [Blu-ray]

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  • “Particularly Frightening and Very Haunting” – Slashfilm

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Capsules

CAPSULE: THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (2025)

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La misteriosa mirada del flamenco

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DIRECTED BY: Diego Céspedes

FEATURING: Tamara Cortes, Paula Dinamarca, Matías Catalán, Pedro Muñoz, Luis Dubó

PLOT: A family of drag queens raise an orphan girl in the shadow of a mining operation in Chile in 1982, but the miners blame them for a deadly plague they believe is spread by the gay men’s gaze.

Still from The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (2025)

COMMENTS: The setting of Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is more than somewhat absurd. A house of cross-dressing men (they call themselves “transvestites,” in the lingo of the period, not “trans” in the modern sense) stands alone at the base of the mountains, at the edge of the village where the miners live. The family within is tolerated by the macho community, although disparaged with slurs. The men avert their gaze, superstitiously believing that the deadly plague spreading through the village is passed through the transvestite’s gaze. The half-dozen occupants of the house raise Lidia, an orphan girl of about 11, with the glamorous Flamingo serving as the girl’s surrogate mother. Other than the prepubescent Lidia and, perhaps, the ambiguously gendered older matron of the clan, Mama Boa (played by trans actress Paula Dinamarca), there are no (cis-)women in the community; even the miner’s children are exclusively male. Perhaps for this reason, the transvestite’s home also serves as the community bordello, with the women putting on evening drag shows and beauty pageants. The more intrigued, or desperate, miners opportunistically sneak into the girls’ rooms to sate their carnal needs. This creates an eternal tension, with the miners tolerating, fearing, and sometimes desiring the transvestites, leading to the ever-present threat of violence—and the girls aren’t afraid to get into a scrap, when their seductive charms fail to get them what they need.

The straight world, therefore, is halfway accommodating, but always harbors a threat. It’s a dynamic that may be familiar to modern gays, although appearing here in exaggerated form. In this fairyland, the transvestites are free to be who they are; but that freedom comes with a price. They are eternal outsiders. True love is hard to find in this desert. Flamingo nurtures her maternal instincts through surrogate motherhood, and Lidia is fiercely loyal to the queer clan, but death—from violence, or disease—always threatens.

The Chilean mountains and desert valleys, reminiscent of the mythical American west, are captured beautifully through Angello Faccini’s excellent cinematography—although the unnecessary use of the 4:3 academy ratio sadly robs us of some of the classic grandeur we might hope for. The film is not quite magical realism per se—nothing actually impossible happens, outside of a dream sequence or two—but it’s of course heavily influenced by the movement. Flamingo is, instead, a slightly dreamlike dramatic fable set in a highly improbable world. It is, perhaps, the world as seen by Lidia, a pre-sexual being who loves the only family she knows, but is on the cusp of learning about the wages of the sinful world.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

 “Diego Céspedes’ gentle, funny, passionate, and occasionally absurdist debut drama packs an enormous emotional punch… [a key event] gradually nudges the film into surreal symbolic territory.”–Siddhant Adlakha, Variety (contemporaneous)