The Last Nosferatu – review

Director: Alan Delabie

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

The info on this, over at IMDb, is sparse. The database suggests it is a film of US origin, and it is in English. However, star and director Alan Delabie is French, as are many of the cast I would guess, and the film is set in Paris. In honesty, I think this should have been shot in French, it probably would have helped some of the primary cast, though that wouldn’t have solved some of the film’s fundamental problems.

waking

It starts with Ethan (Alan Delabie) in bed, wearing a sleep mask, which he whips off as he bolts upwards fangs showing. We return to him asleep in bed (presumably in the past, rather than the preceding scene being a dream). The alarm goes off and he goes through his morning routine before work in a non-specific office job. We also see him set up on a dating app. He meets his friend Daniel (Michael Morris) for drinks, who suggests he avoids such apps.

Michael Morris as Daniel

He arranges a date with Angel77 (Lisa Lejeune) and they are clearly mismatched. She is looking for something long term, he wants to take things one step at a time, she assumes that he’s after sex, he comments on her blouse, she assumes a boob commentary… The dialogue just felt off, whilst it was meant to be a cringe date (that ended with water thrown in his face) it was cringe for all the wrong reasons – the communication was awkward, but didn’t feel acted awkward. It just didn’t work.

dating app

At work, however, Ethan was being lauded for a deal he had landed, though his under-appreciating boss (Bertrand Leplae) was avoiding giving him a rise. He had also arranged a new date with the mysterious Black Pearl (Victoria Axensalva) who had a profile pic of a mouth with fangs(!) – when he asked for a pic she did send one, when he meets her (at the same restaurant/bistro) he doesn’t recognise her with sunglasses despite her pic had her wearing sunglasses. She wants meat, he’s vegetarian and she bets she can get him eating meat. She leaves before food, however, as she gets a call and she suggests her sick brother needs her.

Victoria Axensalva as Black Pearl

A second date sees them walking in a night time park and her biting him and leaving him to turn. He manages to lose his job and buys meat and eats it raw (so her prediction was spot on) and eventually attacks someone and fully turns. Its all pretty standard stuff we’ve seen in a thousand vampire flicks (quite literally). A person is hunting her and Ethan is captured (unconvincingly – there was no suggestion as to how they knew about him, or his relationship – such as it was – with Black Pearl, and no sense to them knowing he would walk along a waterway after doing his laundry so they could plant a thug there to intercept him).

bat features

Eventually he takes on permanent monstrous bat features. I have to confess that I liked the makeup, even though Black Pearl just reverts to her human face and so him being permanently monstrous made little logical sense in a lore way. It is not particularly a spoiler to say that, at the end, she reappears and tells him that his ancestor was a vampire hunter who killed her master, and turning him was punishment (in a ‘sins of the father’ sort of way, even though Ethan was clearly oblivious to his family history). The film title is a nonsense as there are at least three vampires left.

warding with a cross

Not a massive amount of lore. Sunlight hurts his eyes, a cross will ward him and they did make feeds somewhat more protracted than films often do, which was refreshing. The film doesn’t really reach a conclusion – just the revelation about his ancestry – and this feels like the filmmakers were aiming for a sequel. I thought many of the actors struggled with an English script including Delabie and, as I suggested at the head of the review, they would probably have worked better within a French script – though changing the language wouldn’t have changed the lack of substantive story or the holes/contrivances. Watching it, I was reminded of Summer of Blood, but this character is drawn tragic rather than acerbic and the film wasn't particularly comedic. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK