Viy or Spirit of Evil Reviews

(OK) Wonderful in each department: horror, folk, acting, special effects imagination, photo, lighting, sets. Gogol's spirit as alive as alive is the witch each noght in her coffin (in her old hag and young beauty forms) ...

To be honest, I really had no idea what to expect from this flick and the main reason why I wanted to watch it was because it was included in the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' list. Well, I wasn't disappointed, that's for sure, and it turned out to be one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. First of all, it is pretty much impossible to pinpoint a specific genre to this movie. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, it seemed to be a really daft and surreal comedy but it is usually considered as a horror movie but both genre did indeed fit in this movie. It was also one of the most virulent anti-church films I have ever seen which might be explained by the fact that it was made in the Soviet Union. Basically, while the witch was able to summon some really weird monsters and do all kind of crazy sh*t, Khoma, a so-called 'philosopher' who was in fact constantly drunk and vastly incompetent, didn't get much help from his God who was consistently absent and rather useless. Finally, there were also some pretty nifty special-effects reinforcing the weird aspect of this fantasy. Concerning the humor, it was mostly about the characters getting or being drunk so it was fun but not really mind blowing to be honest. Anyway, to conclude, I had never seen anything like this before and, only therefore, it is definitely worth a look.