It’s the 1990s in wintry New York City. Count Dracula’s daughter Nadja has settled into the city that never sleeps. She preys on one-night stands to suck their blood. Having claimed yet another victim, Nadja receives a vision of her father’s death. In the tragedy, Nadja also sees an opportunity: she wants to change her life. However, Van Helsing, who killed Dracula with a stake, is aware of the count’s offspring. Things get more complicated when Nadja becomes interested in a woman named Lucy, who happens to be the wife of Van Helsing’s nephew.
Nadja is a postmodern vampire film, in which Bram Stoker’s characters are thrown into the urban world of the 1990s. There is hardly any familiar imagery from Dracula stories, but the vampire genre’s characteristic melancholy blends in with the film’s lethargic and jaded atmosphere. Some scenes have been shot on a PXL2000 video camera whose pixelated aesthetics try to capture the perceptual experience of being an immortal nocturnal creature. In addition to ennui and malaise, there is deadpan humour, but it is conveyed through an ironic distance. Music from Portishead and My Bloody Valentine pounds on the film’s hip soundtrack. The soundscape of low frequencies might bring to mind David Lynch, who works as the film’s executive producer. Lynch also has a brief cameo as a morgue receptionist.
Ilpo Hirvonen