Dracula

A young filmmaker tasks himself with reclaiming the Dracula story for Romanian cinema, only to experience a crisis of creativity. Determined to make his film, he channels his ideas into an artificial intelligence program, DR. A.I. JUDEX 0.0, generating a collage of stories that include a seedy, fellatio-filled stage performance of the Dracula myth and a real-life vampire hunt through the streets of modern-day Bucharest—not to mention a series of hideous, uncanny renderings of Vlad the Impaler and plenty of zombies.

Bold, unpredictable, and unapologetically over-the-top, Dracula is the absurdist brainchild of iconoclastic master Radu Jude (2023’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), brilliantly commenting on the pervasive ugliness of AI and offering up a deft and pointed survey of our modern visual landscape. In Jude’s hands, Bram Stoker’s landmark novel couples with grand folkloric traditions to produce an unforgettable, maximalist examination of mythmaking and the cinema itself.