I don't know if any film has portrayed the emotion of despair so succinctly as this film. Everything in the movie seems dead or dying, and the characters are confused and melancholy, desperately trying to escape from something that is never explicitly shown. It says something about the timelessness of this movie that I stumbled across it on t.v. one night and couldn't figure out when it was made, anywhere between the 30s and 70s. This movie is so real that it's like watching an old home movie that someone left in the attic decades ago, almost like Blair Witch Project; I think this is the effect that Dreyer was shooting for, because there is no real storyline, and the actors are so self-absorbed that you're convinced they inhabit the special world portrayed in the film. Strange voices in multiple languages pop up out of nowhere. A young woman lying on a bed suffering from the effects of a vampire suddenly springs up and eyes her sister hungrily. These creepy scenes are interspersed with David Gray's reading of the strange little book the old man left for him. There are no real special effects, but watching disembodied shadows dancing across a field, on their way to some dark business, are enough to make your flesh crawl.
I can see how modern viewers might be put off by the pace and incongruity of this movie, but patience and a second viewing (especially on a cold, rainy night) will yield some spine-chilling moments. Don't think about it too hard when you're watching, just let the movie do the work, even if it seems slow. You don't even have to like vampire movies. This is horror stripped of the facade of acting, and the underpinnings that are so apparent in modern films are refreshingly absent here. Blair Witch Project was exactly like this: the sense that you are watching something real, which I think is the most disturbing thing about this movie.
I can see how modern viewers might be put off by the pace and incongruity of this movie, but patience and a second viewing (especially on a cold, rainy night) will yield some spine-chilling moments. Don't think about it too hard when you're watching, just let the movie do the work, even if it seems slow. You don't even have to like vampire movies. This is horror stripped of the facade of acting, and the underpinnings that are so apparent in modern films are refreshingly absent here. Blair Witch Project was exactly like this: the sense that you are watching something real, which I think is the most disturbing thing about this movie.