Really does not do justice to a historical figure who I think is totally fascinating. There are plenty of conflicting reports about just how fucked up Erzebet Bathory was and this movie does allow for both the dark, depraved story (Bathory was killing local peasant girls and bathing in their blood because she believed it was keeping her young, in appearance anyway) and the more political angle (competing nobility coveted her lands/position and set her up with rumors and forged evidence). And though the performances from everyone range from mediocre to decent, the production values are professional and at times really good- especially the costuming which is beautiful while still being believably grimy- the writing is so, so, so excruciatingly simplistic and expository that at no point was I able to enjoy this movie. It wants to badly to be a dark cautionary tale about vanity and power but every scene features characters telling each other things that the receiving characters should arguably already know. It is maddening, boring, and tedious. Delpy does her best to give a layered performance but between her stumbling over the clunky English dialogue with an accent that is nowhere even in the same REGION as Hungarian/Slovakian/Romanian (she just sounds straight up French, which she is, but I'm not even sure she's trying to NOT sound French) and the very staid plotting she gets pretty bogged down. The rest of the cast also, I would say, does their best.
But this film is not pretty enough or compellingly plotted enough to overcome how fucking bad the writing is. It wants to be something it's not quite capable of being, which is the worst kind of movie in my opinion.
