Editorials
“Castlevania: Nocturne” – Showrunner and Directors Break Down Netflix’s Animated Resurrection [Interview]
Netflix’s Castlevania animated series helped break barriers for not only its medium, but also the longstanding stigma that video game adaptations were doomed to fail. Castlevania gracefully bowed out after telling a complete story over the course of four seasons. However, it was revealed that the franchise would continue, albeit with new Castlevania series within the same universe, almost in a style that’s akin to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Castlevania: Nocturne is the first of these new Castlevania series and it follows Richter Belmont, Maria Renard, and a team of intrepid monster hunters in an apocalyptic struggle that’s set against the French Revolution. Castlevania: Nocturne builds upon its predecessor’s strong foundation and finds a careful balance that will appease both fans of the original and newcomers alike. You can read my full review of the debut season here.
To celebrate Castlevania: Nocturne‘s release, co-showrunner Kevin Kolde and directors Sam and Adam Deats get candid on the horror series’ production and setting it apart from its predecessor, the inspirations behind the season’s unique monsters, and where the Castlevania animated universe is heading next.
This interview contains SPOILERS for ‘Castlevania: Nocturne.’
Bloody Disgusting: The Castlevania games have such rich lore that covers so many different characters and places. How did you decide on Richter, Maria, this world, and its inspiration for Nocturne? Did you always know that this would be the next chapter in the franchise?
Kevin Kolde: We had loosely discussed Richter as the next character that we would focus on, going back to the original series. When we talked about the possibility of other series, expanding the universe, and continuing with another Castlevania, it was Richter who seemed to be a favorite among everybody.
Sam Deats: We were of course big fans of the games and bounced around ideas, but it seemed like Richter made the most sense and had the most potential for what we could do in this time period. Focusing on this character in Castlevania’s history ultimately opened up a lot of doors for us.
BD: I love that this show is really a revolution story at the end of the day, albeit on such a grandiose scale. Why did that feel like the right angle for Nocturne?
Kolde: When we started to look at the story that we wanted to tell with Richter, the first thing that we gravitated towards was the time period. It made sense to look at what was going on in Richter’s story and then drawing parallels to the real world at the time of the French Revolution. From a storytelling standpoint it just seemed like there were a lot of opportunities there to tell a story that’s authentic to the French Revolution and then combine all of that with vampires and other lore. We spent a lot of time really trying to get the balance right between the history and the fantasy.
BD: One of my favorite elements of the show is Edouard, the opera singer, and how his music is used throughout the season. How did this unique character come together?
Kolde: I’ll speak for Clive Bradley, my showrunning partner. Edouard is a character who Clive and the writing team created. So much of that element of who Edouard is as a character and the musical element came from Clive. Speaking for myself, I don’t think I was familiar with any of those opera pieces that Edouard sings in the show. That was something that came from Clive and his team. We were so lucky to get Sydney James Harcourt, which allowed the role to evolve and expand even further. Sydney is such a wonderful actor, but also such an amazing singer, that when we started to get into recording those songs and see how they worked together he gave us so much more to work with.
Sam Deats: One of the things that I love about this element about Edouard is that it allows us to further incorporate music into the series. Music is such an important part of the Castlevania series even going all the way back to the NES game tracks. In some of the later games, like Symphony of the Night, there are more tracks that resemble classical music, like what we’re doing here. So this type of music is more at home in Castlevania than one would think. It still feels like Castlevania.
BD: The original Castlevania looked gorgeous, but Nocturne truly goes above and beyond with its visuals. These visuals also carry over into really complex and compelling battle choreography. Can you elaborate on building and perfecting that?
Sam Deats: Whenever I get the chance to go nuts with the action in these episodes we call it “The Sam Deats Special” and there’s a lot of that here. These scripts gave me a lot of room to have fun and some of my favorite moments are in these episodes. It all comes down to exploring the abilities of the characters, their powers, and how that clashes against whatever it is they’re fighting. I really enjoy trying to find new things for the audience to see. I don’t always want to fall back on the same handful of abilities again and again. I try to have the characters look for unique solutions to their problems so it stays fresh for the viewer and for us, as creators. That was something in particular that was important to us when we were crafting Nocturne and building the ability-set for Richter and Maria. That was really exciting to me. Richter has the classic Belmont weapons and abilities, but he also has access to magic in this uniquely raw form. It’s more about enhancing himself and his weapons.
Adam Deats: The fight scenes are also when we get to be the most purely Castlevania in the show when it comes to designs. It’s a time where we can do a lot of referential stuff to the games and it feels really at home. There’s that skull attack from Symphony of the Night that’s in the first episode.
BD: There are such creative designs for the show’s many night creatures that almost feel like they have a Guillermo del Toro influence. How did you figure out the look for Nocturne’s monsters and what were the inspirations there?
Kolde: When we first started talking about Castlevania’s night creatures and how they’d be different than what was previously seen in the series, we were looking through a lot of Ayami Kojima’s art, whether it was her artbooks, creature designs, or vampire designs. Her work features all of these elements of humanity that we wanted to make sure were prominent in Nocturne.
Sam Deats: Some of the night creature designs from this season are also inspired by the story direction. These night creatures are being created in a different manner than what we’ve seen in the past. They’re coming from a special source and, as a result, we wanted to reflect that in these creatures’ appearances. The human element was very important there and we wanted to make sure that it was still present.
Adam Deats: We still tried to incorporate some of the classic Castlevania monsters here and there, when possible. It just doesn’t feel like Castlevania without them, you know? So those original monster elements are still there, too.
BD: Richter and Maria have an energy that’s very comparable to what was present with Trevor and Sypha. Was that intentional and did you consider doing something completely different with this show’s main characters?
Sam Deats: Honestly, so much of that dynamic is the natural result of what’s present with Richter and Maria in the Castlevania games. There’s this brotherly and sisterly dynamic between them that really shines through. That just felt like the natural direction for their relationship.
BD: What kind of arc have you mapped out for the series and did you know that you’d always be building to Alucard’s return?
Kolde: Yeah, Alucard’s return was always planned for this part in the story arc at the end of the season. We wrote everything else around that.
Sam Deats: As a Castlevania fan, I’m really excited to explore Richter and Maria’s relationship with Alucard on a more expanded level than what’s been previously seen. I’m excited to see them get to know each other and work together. We really wanted these new characters to shine, but there’s still plenty of new things to come for Alucard.
Kolde: We’re always looking at the broader Castlevania universe when it comes to where we should expand and evolve. Nocturne has felt like an evolution and expansion of what we did in the original series. We never want to be in a position of just doing the same thing over again. The lore goes on for so long and there are so many great characters, stories, and branches that we can explore. We’re always having those discussions.
Castlevania: Nocturne and Castlevania are available to stream on Netflix.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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