Residents of a coastal town learn, with deathly consequences, the secret shared by the two mysterious women who have sought shelter at a local resort.
Not just another vampire movie, Byzantium is seductive, stylish and quietly captivating. Arguably the best vampire movie since Let The Right One In.
The film often meanders, but these delicious moments of surprise and invention more than compensate.
Eye-catching though both performances are, Byzantium remains an indecisive oddity with Jordan’s rhythm of reverie never quite finding its groove.
Well made, but was it worth making?
Their characters are not the only things about this film that have been de-fanged.
A mixture of tough and wistful and reflective and brutal, this is the ideal vampire movie for Twi-hards who’ve had their hearts broken for the first time and want to move on to a less cosy vision of eternal romance with a side order of addiction.
Visually the film is arresting, creating a fairytale look to the flashbacks with waterfalls of cascading blood, mist-covered islands of doom and vampires who use spindly nails to slit open the veins of their victims rather than pointed teeth.
So, all in all, you can't help feeling that Byzantium nudges self-homage, or even self-parody. That wouldn't matter if it were less garbled and frantic.
It ends, appropriately, with a car-crash, a beheading, and a possible answer to who burnt down Hastings Pier. Oh those pesky vampires!
Byzantium has lots to offer but an uncomfortably split personality: equal parts emo teen drama and high-gloss horror. It also leaves its attempt to reposition itself as a feminist fable far too late.
There’s more to English Gothic than spurts of gore and heaving cleavage, and though Byzantium has both of those things in happy abundance, it bungles the chance to delve deeper.
Jordan, torn between satisfying mainstream tastes and attempting something more critical, seems similarly ill-at-ease. All this anaemic exercise demonstrates is how vampirism as a theme has, for now, been bled dry, and that even a thoughtful creative can do nothing to revive it.
Jordan tells this peculiar romance confidently, and it is rivetingly shot by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt.
Byzantium is a complex film that combines a traditional gothic horror story (though not one that sticks to traditional vampire law), social history and a realistic account of dealing with authentic physical distress.
Director Neil Jordan and actor Gemma Arterton talk vampire feminism in Byzantium
Myth Making: Neil Jordan on Byzantium
General release. Check local listings for show times.