Gothic Beach

This week, Neil Jordan's less famous vampire tale, a video game-inspired puzzle of a movie, and a can't-miss zine (medium spoilers for Byzantium, light spoilers for Exit 8) . . .

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Byzantium, dir. Neil Jordan, 2012.

Weight of history. Vampires in fiction and film can be weighed down by their histories. They are immortal after all. The high potency of the past in Byzantium gives the film something of this same quality. The past does not inform the present so much as resolve in it. The present feels like a third act, a denouement. To imagine immortality can be to ruminate on endurance and stasis. But here, history functions like a wave, crashing over us, in the present, with blistering force.

Gothic beach. Crucial to Byzantium’s spell is its setting at the beach. Some of the effect is generated by contrast—by the juxtaposition of a vampire story with a resort town and its rides and arcades. But this is really just an undercurrent. The beach may have its generic range of moods and textures, but Jordan finds a different register that is entirely authentic to the place. A beach town can be fading restaurants, dingy hotels, and gray sand. It’s a little dark, a little melancholy, and a fine place for vampires.