Grimey nunsploitation flick about u-haul lesbians trying to escape a convent. So funny to watch this a day after Carrie as both end with a bereaved, religiously oppressed teen girl covered in blood and everyone set on fire.
Alucarda expects you to bring a lot of existing criticisms of Catholicism for its themes of religious homophobia to really land, and I do wish more time was spent developing the convent and our duo's life within it. Everything flies by at 64 minutes, jumping headfirst into a doomed relationship and the exorcisms that follow. It works in a YA romance kind of way - how when you're a teenager everything feels imperative and the future a terrifying question mark - but is a bit thin if I'm trying to read this as an admonishment of the church as an oppressive institution. The presence of a Romani devil character also muddies things a bit, being an outside force that instigates the convent's unraveling (Alucarda and Justine's arc would be a much more coherent lesbian love story without him).
But God, the imagery! Easily one of the most striking films I've seen in years, every set is a dreamlike non-space the swallows the cast whole. Engulfing caves, fog drenched courtyards, lush fields that stretch for miles. The understated costumes are deceptively simple, evolving with their characters to be themselves restrictive and drenched in filth. There's not a lot of gore but blood seeps off the screen like a leaking ceiling, eventually drowning everyone in the collapse. Praying that somebody will pick this up for a remaster and I can retire the fuzzy DVD rip that is seemingly the only way to watch this outside of importing a disc.
Konami owes royalties to Juan López Moctezuma. Put Alucarda in Castlevania you cowards.
Content warnings: blood, gore, self flagellation, torture