31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 - Movie 2

Upon his death, Dracula's daughter, Nadja decides that she's now free of her father's curse and decides to make a new life for herself and her ailing twin brother, who has already found a life for himself away from the family curse. Nadja's desire is at odds with her nature which is more similar to her father than she realizes. Instead of breaking free from her old life, she brings ruin to the lives of couple of innocents, her brother and the woman he loves, and to herself.

Nadja (1994) is stylish with a dreamlike quality to it that makes it mesmerizing and a film that is able to overcome its small budget and occasional flaws. Portions of the film feel particularly ethereal due to their being filmed with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera. The performances occasionally have a somewhat unreal, almost theatrical, manner to them that sometimes distracts, but generally fits the material well. Elina Löwensohn is captivating in the title role, and Peter Fonda makes a great somewhat deranged Van Helsing. Like Byzantium (see previous post), Nadja, is more interested in the mundane existence of the vampire than the predatory horror. When it was first released to movie theaters, I saw it at least twice, captivated by the hypnotic quality of the film. In the twenty years since I last saw it, I'm happy to discover it hasn't lost its charm.