I need more of this kind of movie immediately. Poorly dubbed. Questionable overacting. Nonsensical storyline. Overall an entire mess… but I loved every second of it.
Travel to a Soviet land of old, where religion runs deep throughout the towns and villages and stories of witchcraft and magic horrify local peasants. We follow seminary student Khoma, who, to put it nicely, is a little too lazy to do any good. All he wants to do is eat and sleep and enjoy all the gifts he gets as a messenger of God.
Khoma and his friends travel home for a break and decide to ask to rest at a rural farmhouse. A bit of bullying of the old woman living there ensues, but the group is allowed to sleep there for the night (albeit separated in different rooms). Khoma is awoken and terrorized by the old woman trying to seduce him, and when she is rebuffed, turns into a flying, cackling witch. He gains the upper hand and hurts her, but not before she reveals herself as a now, beautiful young woman. Scared, Khoma goes back to his church for help but is sent on a mission back to the village to bless a dying girl — one he has come to know as a witch. He spends the next few days doing battle with the witch’s reanimated “corpse” and the many monsters she awakens with her black magic powers.
I find Viy an absolute joy to watch, and it’s definitely one I can play again and again. It reminded me a lot of The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism; they both are foreign movies with pretty bad dubbing but scenarios that are comic gold. Small things, like obvious switching from outside settings to painted backgrounds and studio sets, turned out not to be a big deal because I was paying more attention to Khoma and his backwoods beliefs, trying to defeat a witch that, to be honest, wasn’t really doing much that would warrant her death.
Throughout the film, we see how the filmmakers tried to make things scary, like with makeup and effects, but they came off very amateur. Again though, it didn’t matter because I was continuously laughing and all around having a good time. Khoma and the townsfolks’ actions were somehow both nonsensical and exactly what would happen in real life at the same time. Viy is nowhere near frightening, but it is so interesting compared to other country’s films of the time. Janneke Parrish of The Focus Pull online magazine details Viy‘s status in world film, saying:
… it’s an interesting look at Soviet cinema and how film can be made in an environment of censorship and regulation. “Viy,” in the end, is more interesting as a relic than as a film in its own right, though it has its moments, and certainly has style.
Janneke Parrish, The Focus Pull, 13 October 2014
With it’s bumbling characters, costume make-up, not-so-horrifying monsters, and lacking script, Viy should really be a dud. Instead, we get a fantastical retelling of old Soviet folk tales about witches that we can all enjoy and laugh at. I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is, but Viy has that kitschy quality that I look for in older movies; it’s great if I can be scared (it is horror after all), but sometimes it’s enough to view it through a wider lense. Instead of comparing Viy to The Craft or Hocus Pocus, leave it as its own entity and enjoy the show.
