Eureka, out now

 

An occult-obsessed student’s visit to a small French village finds him drawn into an unsettling mystery around a stricken family’s struggle with malevolent forces.

Freely adapted from the elements of a collection of horror stories by Sheridan Le Fanu (In a Glass Darkly) Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1932 horror movie celebrates its 90th birthday with this new 2K restoration by the Danish Film Institute, using multiple sources, and is the movie’s first release on Blu-ray in the UK.

Death is all around us in this memento mori, with striking Imagery of clocks, skulls and the reaper. Boasting deleted scenes from the French version – there’s a lengthy staking of the vampire and asphyxiation of the doctor – the movie was funded by Nicholas de Gunzburg, who here plays occult student Allan Grey, with a remarkable likeness to author H P Lovecraft.

This release includes audio commentaries by critic and programmer Tony Rayns and filmmaker and Vampyr fan Guillermo del Toro, as well as visual essays by scholar Casper Tybjerg and critic Kim Newman. There’s video interviews with music and cultural historian David Huckvale on the film’s score and its adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu , a vintage documentary about Carl Th. Dreyer and a 100-page book featuring promotional materials and new writing.

Verdict: A key milestone in horror movie history gets the full Masters of Cinema VIP treatment, and it looks stunning. 10/10 

Nick Joy

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