Released in 2018 and directed by Marco Lledó Escartín, this is a very slow burn horror, done in a documentary style, which interests us due to the central entity they call a kukuth. This would seem to be a derivative of the Albanian kukuthi/kukudhi, which is a vampire type listed in Bane’s Encylclopedia of Vampire Mythology. However, the entry in Bane bears no resemblance to the creature here, Bane’s description of the kukudhi is a vampire that “seldom needs to feed, and when it does, it takes a very small amount of blood from its victim.” In the film the kukuth is described as a soul eater.
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| monks' fresco |
The primary character is Julien (Julien Blaschke) a documentary maker. He had been in Albania some 18 years before the primary timeline of the film, creating a documentary about monks within a particular order who seemed to have a spiritualist/pagan overtone to their beliefs. He was there with his wife and a crew and they were in a bar, having finished filming, when they heard gunfire and screaming. They rushed out with camera.
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| Julien Blaschke as Julien |
In context it was the day before the so-called lottery insurgence of Vlora, a real-world event of civil unrest following the collapse of a Ponzi scheme. However they were too far away, in Mesopotam, for it to be connected. The night became known as the Mesopotam pogrom and it started with a man, Enver Simaku (Ferran Gadea), dying. Enver had been in a coma for years (actually, probably not a coma and more a vegetative state) and with his death his brothers went mad and tortured and killed at least 50 people – Julien’s wife amongst them.
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| the spirit of Enver |
So, Julien has returned to Albania to understand what happened and unearths a story of supernatural events, discovering that an undercover agent from the Government’s anti-paranormal brigade had been investigating the Simakus due to a belief that they were involved in the supernatural. The villagers believed a kukuth was in the village – and as things develop it seems that it could possess people, had possessed Enver and the man had kept it trapped within him – his death allowing its escape. Julien starts seeing things, including the creature…
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| the Kukuth |
The film, as mentioned, is a slow burn and the documentary style adds a real world feel but also stifles the scares. This isn’t helped by the absolutely stoic portrayal of Julien. Nevertheless, I found the idea fascinating and loved the idea of using some pretty obscure (to me) Albanian folklore; even if the nature of the kukuth seems changed to fit the film, with possession and inciting violence being the order of the day and even the accusation of being a soul eater seems to be hyperbolic. It is primarily shot in English but there are moments of Spanish, Italian and Albanian.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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