Freely adapted from classic Victorian supernatural tales by author Sheridan Le Fanu, "Vampyr" tells the story of a young man who becomes involved with two sisters, one of whom, wasting away with a strange sickness, turns out to be the victim of a vampire. Director Carl Theodor Dreyer transformed Le Fanu's horror tales into a mystic quest, a meditation on the theme of death, and neatly fashioned it as an abstract experimental film. The camera is like a sleepwalker, leading us, trancelike, into a labyrinth from which cause and effect have disappeared. The hauntingly sinister atmosphere created is disquieting and unforgettable.
