Tuesday, December 06, 2022

Short Film: Nocturnu


A Brazilian film from 1998, this Dennison Ramalho film comes in at around 11 minutes in length and uses an interesting combination of Black and White and colour, with no dialogue but an almost industrial buzz to the soundtrack. It, of course, has vampires.

It starts in black and white, at a port that feels gritty through the photographer’s lens and cars pull up below a large liner at dock. People exit the cars and they carry video equipment but also take other equipment; crosses, mallets… they are clearly vampire hunters and they board the ship.

victim

On board we see bodies, shot in a moody black and white but revealed in washed-out colour when seen through their video cameras, with which they document the scene. The shots merge with visions of what occurred as we see a pair of vampires, played by Denise V. and Fábio Seelig, killing their way through the crew after emerging from shipping crates. Eventually the hunters hear a noise.

Roseane Milani as the nun

They find a closed crate and open it. In it is a nun (Roseane Milani) who holds a cross up to the hunters, hiding behind it. It seems she is a survivor and we see her in happier (colour) times. But then a shadow moves and a door to the outside closes. As the hunters go on alert the nun starts to laugh, turning the cross upside down as she does so. The vampires, it appears, have managed to escape the ship…

vampire

The film tells its tales in silence, with images talking for it – be it stark horror images of the dead and of vampiric activity or speeded up motion through the streets and of vehicles moving through the night. The images are punctuated by the industrial noise of the soundtrack and the whole film is design to overwhelm. I rather liked it.

The imdb page is here.

The age restricted film can be seen on You Tube.

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