I rented this film based on all the glowing quotes from movie critics that were plastered all over the DVD cover - my experience is one which proves the old adage that not everything you read in print should be taken at face value.This film started out really well, good pacing, interesting style, great deadpan black humor in an eccentric village - basically like Waking Ned Divine, except this time it was Romania, not Ireland, and there were vampires.However, after about 30 minutes the film became bogged down, and all of a sudden the pacing slowed to a crawl, the humor and gags started to become monotonous, and the plot suddenly seemed to consist of the lead character going back and forth from one part of the village to another in an effort to try and unravel the mystery - in the end he seemed to spend more time pointlessly moving about than the plot did.I really liked the first 20 minutes of this film, so I was absolutely disappointed when it fell off the pace and lost its way, becoming mired in its own overly complicated plot and overly-repetitive ethnic gags.All they needed to do here was take a leaf out of the script writing playbook that gave us Waking Ned Divine and this would have been a classic plot driven black comedy about an eccentric village that kept you hooked by progressing the story beyond that of a mere land dispute, or bogging it down in local politics to the point of losing its universal appeal and themes.It's not often that a movie snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, but this was definitely one of those cases - everything was started right, the technical aspects were excellent, acting good, but it never managed to bring it all home or maintain the initial hook of the first 20 minutes.

When the villagers killed Constantin Tirescu, they thought it was justice. Vlad Cozma thinks it was murder. Now Constantin thinks pickles might go nice with blood.Dennis Harvey at Variety called it "drolly funny if a tad long-winded". I think he is right on both points. Second one first -- coming in around 104 minutes, I think shaving ten minutes off would help the pacing and get more of an audience. Not saying it drags, but it could be faster.First point second, it is quite funny, in an offbeat way. Romanians doing a conga line to "Spirit in the Sky", old men asking if Italy has nice pizza (it does, and ice cream, too). And weird comments like a character being "too ***** to stick his finger up my ***." The fast food nightmare scene was excellent, too, both funny and sickening at the same time.Faye Jackson says, "Romanian is a language that uses a lot of word play and slang and my Romanian simply isn't good enough to write dialogue that sounds like Romanian as it's spoken. So I had to write it in English." She has been asked why it was not in Romanian since they filmed it there and it starred Romanians. Perhaps the right thing to do would be to get a new director, but since Jackson did so well, that seems unnecessary in hindsight.The gore is commendable, very good and not too gross for a horror film, especially the scene with the police officer. I am not entirely clear why the cop has born without ribs, though. (I suppose he might have been born with ribs and had them removed later, but it is still weird.) I am waiting to see what Faye Jackson does next. The director's next project is "sort of Dirty Pretty Things meets the A Team, except nothing like that at all". Wow. Yep, wow.

Well this came as a welcome surprise ... Well written ... Well acted ... Well shot ... And with a heart ... Such a rarity in "cinema" these days OK ... So it is low budget and there aren't planets exploding and people turning into beasts of some sort or another... Oh hold on... There are beasts sort of ... But much more subtly :)) Seeing the hugely baroque churches hovering over the poor homes of the Romanian villagers is a very bizarre sight ... I've never been to Romania but this made it a place I'd definitely be interested in visiting I'm kind of hoping the strigoi part was fiction of course : )) Give this one a go ... Its well worth an evening of your time

I've just recently seen Strigoi at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and was absolutely surprised at how good the film was. The trailer I had seen for the film made it seem like a very low budget, campy, been there done that vampire film. What I was shown was a well produced, professional, good looking film with an interesting vampire story. As an added bonus, there are some funny moments and good jokes mixed in throughout the film so that it doesn't come off stale.The only real problem I had with the film was the slow pacing and longer than necessary runtime. Had the film been cut down by 10-20 minutes, I think it would become 100 times more enjoyable.I was surprised to find out that the film has technically been done since early in the year but had only now, played in front of an audience. I am lucky to say I was able to catch this little gem at it's world premiere.I hope to see more from this talented writer/director in the future and wish Strigoi all the best. With no big name actors, it may be a hard sell which is a damn shame. Genre fans need to see this film. In a genre where the market is flooded with the taste du jour and the films often leave a bad taste in your mouth, Strigoi serves up a platter of delicious offerings genre fans are sure to eat up.