Review of The Countess (2009) by A M — 09 Sep 2014

I started this film thinking it was about the one of the most prolific serial killers in human history and that'd it be a film full of gore, thrills, and disturbing imagery. What you wouldn't expect is for the film to have a love story that was so sickingly over-saccharine, so poorly dialogued, and so completely cheesy that it made every scene laughably bad.

This is how the Countess begins, and it sets the tone for the film written by, directed by, and starring Julie Delpy. The Countess tells the tale of Countess Elzebet Bathrony, whom legend says killed hundred of girls and bathed in their blood in order to preserve her beauty after she is spurned by a lover.

Julie Delpy takes this legend and delivers one of the most entertainingly bad films I have ever seen. Some of the dialogue in this film is so poorly written that it literally caused my jaw to drop. It doesn't help that it's also delivered by actors giving universally terrible performances.

For some reason Julie Delpy decided to have this Hungarian tale be told in English, and every actor speaks as if they have no idea what they are saying, even though I know they are all proficient English speakers.

They only one who seems able to give the story any gravitas is William Hurt, who appears to be barely present through his mumbling. He's still better than the laughable performances of Julie Delpy and Daniel Bruhl, who are truly terrible.

But then the film doesn't stop finding ways to be awful. It's misguided love story is followed by the actual story, which only give the barest possible insight into the fact that our protagonist murdered hundreds of women.

The film doesn't eve seem to care about what made it's subject matter so famous. It actually trys to give the story a feminist message by portraying Bathory as a women fighting against a man's world, despite the fact that she killed quite a few women in her shallow bid to remain young forever.

It's hard to find one part of this film that is not done completely wrong. The only thing that keeps it from being completely unwatchable is that it's an slightly enjoyable kind of terrible. But in the end, it's still terrible.