Byzantium
Directed by Neil Jordan
- drama
- fantasy
- thriller
The story
Residents of a coastal town learn, with deadly consequences, the secret shared by the two mysterious women who have sought refuge at a local boarding house, the Byzantium.
What it’s like
Moody, sea-washed gothic in cold grey and sepia-brown tones, with grainy handheld intimacy in the seedier rooms and lush, saturated flashbacks to earlier centuries that shift the texture into candlelit amber and blood-red velvet. The coastal town is all wet stone, fog and biting wind, and the boarding house feels damp, crowded and faintly rotten, with hard shadows and little warmth. The score leans on mournful strings and low, insistent pulses that swell at moments of threat and then fall back into near silence over the sound of waves. Pacing is deliberate and brooding, with long pauses between sudden, sharp bursts of action. Its tone is melancholy and bitter, with a restless, claustrophobic unease underneath. The central relationship is a strained, fiercely protective bond between a mother and daughter who have been drifting for centuries, and the story turns on what that love costs them. Violence is present and sometimes brutal: there are bloody bites, throat-slashing and killings that land with real weight, though it is more often sudden than lingering, and sexual content is restrained but present. It suits a rainy evening alone and fits viewers who want atmospheric dread, gothic romance and a darker, character-driven vampire story rather than something gentle.
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