Messy, chaotic and overlong but perverse, thought-provoking and utterly ingenious, the Romanian provoc-auteur channels A.I. in his filmmaking with a humongous smirk on his face, as his meta-film implosively deconstructs ‘Dracula’.
Review #3,048
Dir. Radu Jude
2025 | Romania | Horror, Comedy | 170min | 1.85:1 | Romanian & other languages
Not rated – exceeds R21 guidelines for unsimulated sexual scene, explicit nudity, violence and gore, and religiously offensive references
Cast: Adonis Tanța, Gabriel Spahiu, Oana Maria Zaharia, Alexandru Dabija, Lukas Miko
Plot: In modern-day Transylvania, vampire hunts and labor strikes collide with sci-fi twists, romance, and AI-crafted tales, as multiple storylines blend folklore, classic horror, and contemporary elements into a fresh take on Dracula’s legend.
Awards: Won Junior Jury Award – 2nd Prize & Nom. for Golden Leopard (Locarno)
International Sales: Luxbox
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Mature – A.I. Filmmaking; Meta-Film; Dracula; Tradition & Modernity
Narrative Style: Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
At close to three hours long, this is as messy, chaotic and overlong as you would have imagined it to be. But it is also a Radu Jude film, so it is perverse, thought-provoking and utterly ingenious.
It won’t make it to Singapore though, like his Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021), which similarly contains scenes of explicit unsimulated sex, and in the case of Dracula, AI-rendered gory porn, and blasphemous dialogue that would offend any deeply conservative religious zealot.
However, as fans of Jude would attest, it’s all attempted with a humongous smirk on his face. Very much done with the spate of misguided Hollywood attempts at horror spectacles, Jude, being Romanian himself, decides to satirise the roots of his country’s greatest cultural export: the monster Dracula.
Further complicating things, Jude invokes a new technology—the even more monstrous A.I.—to help him envision his movie.
It takes on a meta-quality so heightened that one can only marvel at how dreadful indeed A.I. moviemaking is, as Jude subjects us to macabre moving images as part of his storytelling, from transition shots to full-on montages.
“He has huge skills with his teeth, the pleasure will be all yours!”
If James Cameron significantly elevated the craft of 3D filmmaking with Avatar (2009), then Jude might be the first major (art) filmmaker to show us how startlingly fascinating yet debasing the use of A.I. in film is.
He doesn’t judge but is merely being transparent with the tool at his disposal. Better to dispose, I guess, before it corrupts the mind and the artistic process.
Structured rather unevenly as a series of chapters, and tackling everything from silent film (e.g. ever wonder how Murnau’s Dracula (1922) would look like with the minimalism of Dreyer?) to the ills of contemporary Romania haunted by its socialist past (very much a staple in the Radu Jude canon), Dracula is an implosive deconstruction of what it means to take an established I.P. (there’s a cheeky reference to how A.I. can’t make use of Coppola’s Dracula (1992) because it’s copyrighted), type in a few prompts on your shiny new iPad, and trigger a worthy experiment that foretells a potential digital apocalypse.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 