Cult Cinema: Nadja (1994) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of October Films

The story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula continues to be retold many times over across the silver screen including but not limited to the recent Robert Eggers blockbuster Nosferatu which itself is a remake of an unofficial adaptation that ran into legal trouble with the Stoker estate originally.  However, despite the face of the ageless eternal bloodsucking tormented vampire and his areas of travel from Transylvania to a populated city has never looked or played out quite like Cherry 2000 screenwriter Michael Almereyda’s gender-swapped Brooklyn-set take on Stoker’s saga Nadja.  Produced by and featuring a cameo by the late David Lynch as a mortician as well as Lynch’s longtime co-producer Mary Sweeney, this New York based iteration on the undead is at once offbeat and more than a little noirish with dark smokey alleyways and deep shadows.  Oh and Van Helsing played by Peter Fonda here might be an eccentric nutcase. 

 
Dracula’s daughter Nadja (Romanian Schindler’s List actress Elina Löwensohn) has just witnessed her father’s death by way of a stake driven through the heart by Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) who has since been jailed for the murder of the undead count.  Intent on scattering Dracula’s cremated ashes amid Brooklyn and pay a visit to her twin brother Edgar (Jared Harris), she meets an apathetic young married woman named Lucy (Galaxy Craze) and quickly forms an erotic relationship with her.  Meanwhile Van Helsing is bailed out of prison by his nephew Jim (Martin Donovan) who also happens to be Lucy’s husband, further thickening the plot developments.  All the while, Nadja busily tries to her sickly brother Edgar through a blood transfusion with baby sharks while commanding Lucy’s every move with her entrancing gaze. 

 
Though a Dracula adaptation transposed to modern day which has been done before, Nadja with its shimmering grainy luminous 35mm cinematography and occasional experimental Fisher-Price PXL 2000 ‘PixelVision’ camerawork by Boys Don’t Cry cameraman Jim Denault and a moody jazzy noirish score by child-actor turned I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead composer Simon Fisher-Turner is something of a nighttime promenade through the dark streets of Brooklyn.  Less of a horror movie and more of a surreal mood piece that isn’t wholly sure of how seriously it takes the material with Almereyda’s spin, it is perhaps best remembered for the David Lynch connection as he bailed the film out as well as presented the film and sold it to October Films who eventually also released Lynch’s Lost Highway.  Often drifting in and out of genre-thriller and experimental video installation piece, Nadja may be the closest cinema will ever come to a David Lynch produced Dracula film.

 
Deadpan and dry, a bit like listening to a Bohren & Der Club of Gore album of moody sexy neo-noir, Nadja despite critical praise failed theatrically upon initial release.  Costing around $1 million to produce, it took in a measly $443,169 though it did pick up steam as an art-house favorite.  Darkly humorous and even a little impish, Almereyda’s filmmaking career nevertheless flourished anyway as he forged ahead with films like Marjorie Prime and Tesla in 2020.  Looking back on it, it serves as an interesting footnote in Almereyda’s career, Lynch’s career and particularly adds a unique dynamic to the ever-evolving lore of Bram Stoker’s timeless horror literary epic. 

 
While not the definitive take and certainly never intentionally frightening, Najda is awash in murky rain soaked deep shadowed style and seems to forecast Lynch’s reunion with Barry Gifford on his subsequent neo-noir classic Lost Highway.  As a standalone film outside of the Lynch sphere, Almereyda debatably joins avant-garde filmmaker E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten as a film that forces viewers to look at the black-and-white flickering gothic-horror images with a new pair of glasses.

--Andrew Kotwicki