A struggling filmmaker (Adonis Tanta) is working on a film called Dracula, but it’s “not about Dracula, just a washed-up actor playing Dracula,” as he explains in a clip from Radu Jude’s film of the same name, which The A.V. Club can exclusively premiere. This sentiment also somewhat captures the spirit of Radu Jude’s Draculaas a whole. The film is about the famous Count, but it’s also about the unnamed director, the washed-up actor, a princess that gets captured by a vampire, an old lady trying to be young, Marxism, flying penises that grow on corn stalks, Romanian politics, OnlyFans, exploitative tourism, and so, so, so much more.
How does Jude pull all of this off? With a little help from AI, as seen in the clip below. In it, the filmmaker tells his audience that he’s “found a much better AI” from some American-Japanese company to do his bidding. In this instance, he asks his inhuman assistant to “find a way for Vlad the Impaler and Dracula to become one and the same and appear in modern day Romania.” The scene—one of many slop-filled vignettes throughout the film—needs to be “the bomb” but “with some deeper, philosophical stuff too.” Oh, and it also needs to be “science-y.” You’ll need to buy a ticket to see Dracula in theaters to actually experience the resulting monstrosity, but rest assured that it will be approximately five times wilder than its prompt makes it sound.
Anyone skeptical of a movie relying so heavily on the divisive technology should know that Jude’s own feelings are just as complicated. While he did use AI as a stand-in for scenes he couldn’t afford to shoot, he wrote in the film’s press notes that he “always picked the worst, most obviously fake images, the ones with mistakes” because he “find(s) those glitches poetic.” He understands the “ongoing ethical debates” around AI, he continued, “but the tools are out there, they’re legal, and I needed to make the film.” Besides, he added, “AI is a kind of Dracula, too: it feeds on others without asking permission. It’s parasitic by nature. In that regard, it made perfect sense.”
Audiences will be able to decide whether this particular vampire’s coven is for them starting tomorrow, October 29, when the satire premieres in theaters. Check out the new clip below:
