a review of 魔鬼记号

2019 CULT MOVIE CHALLENGE WEEK 21: MEXICAN HORROR WEEK In spite of the title's winking allusion to Stoker, it's less of a vampire movie than a combination witch/nunsploitation melodrama. There's a depiction of a black mass/Satanic orgy that wouldn't be out of place in one of the historical vignettes from "Haxan", as well as an exorcism scene that feels straight out of Ken Russell's "The Devils." The entire film is set up as a religious allegory and critique of Christian excesses, but at the same time it's hard to divine the actual nature and motivations of the title character; Alucarda has plenty of reasons to turn against the Church, none of which necessarily have to do with being a literal spawn of Satan, and it would have been nice if the movie had played with that ambiguity a bit more instead.