User Reviews

Run and find this movie.

Based on a novel by Russia's leading contemporary writer Victor Pelevin, Empire V is one of the wildest movies I've seen since, well, ever.

I honestly haven't see a more original vampire movie in my life. The sell copy claims that it's "a dark satire on contemporary culture and global capitalism and a universal coming of age story of an average young man challenged by a Faustian gift of power and knowledge, forced to make his way in a post-moral world."

But man, it's so big in scope that I just couldn't believe it.

In this universe, vampires are the Fifth Empire, the ruling class of the world, the elite that we all aspire to be. They even created mankind from apes. But the don't feed on us. Well, not our bodies. Instead, they seek bablos, the state of money created by the human monetary gland that is the very seal of human vitality. No one knows this and vampires exist through glamour that makes people feel inferior and spend more money, while they also spread disinformation that obscures what the world is truly about.

Roman (Vladimir Epifantsev) is a normal twenty-something living at home and unloading trucks when grafitti promises an escape from being poor. This takes him to the mansion of Brahma (Vladimir Epifantsev), who turns him into a vampire -- using The Tongue, which takes one drop of blood -- and gives him his estate.

He's trained for this new life by Loki (Bronislav Vinogrodskiy and discovers that clear liquids of famous people can be ingested to learn their skills, such as a moment where he learns to drive like Steve McQueen. Roman soon becomes Rama II and falls for a fellow young vamp, Hera (Taya Radchenko), while battling his nemesis Mithra VI (Oxxxymirin).

There's a lot to love here, including a deep dive into the history of this universe, the fact that vampires fund all the movies made about them so that humans never know who they are, a goddess named Ishtar (Vera Alentova) that appears in CGI form and a climatic battle in the form of poetry.

You have to love a movie that upsets the government so much that Russia banned it. This reminds me of the energy that I felt when I first saw Nightwatch. Even more exciting, this feels like only the beginning of this story. Director Victor Ginzburg, who wrote this with Pelevin, has created something incredible.