Rating: C-
Dir: Nikolay Khomeriki
Star: Evgeniy Tsyganov, Daisy Head, Dmitriy Lysenkov, Yuri Kolokolnikov
This begins very impressively, with a top-notch recreation of 19th-century St. Petersburg. The city is being terrorized by a serial killer who is leaving corpses behind, with various organs missing. After a hard-boiled egg with a pentagram on it is found inside one victim’s chest, detective Sergey Rostov decides – not inaccurately – that there’s a ritual motive at work. For help, he turns to visiting English spiritualist Olivia Reed (Head), who has become the talk of the town for her seances. After the pair’s relationship gets off to a rocky start, Sergey arresting Olivia as a fraud, they begin to work together, in order to stop the killer before he can complete his series of human sacrifices.
No problem at all with the look of the film, which does an excellent job of capturing the city, at all levels of society, from the mansions of the elites, down to the slums occupied by the poor and criminal classes. Something like Olivia’s performance is also staged very well, emphasizing the “show” nature of proceedings, though also makes clear she has genuine paranormal talents. Which makes it all the odder that she chooses to try and deceive Sergey when he comes to visit her. It’s these inconsistencies in the plot which succeed in dragging the film down to below average, ending up as just another serial killer thriller, albeit with a garnish of occult overtones, and that well-executed period atmosphere.
The other major issue is the typical one in this kind of “psychic assists the police” movie. It basically leads to lazy writing, with the psychic able to come up with whatever information is needed to propel the plot forward, because they are a psychic. You see the same thing occurring when people in films are suffering from “cinematic amnesia”: their memories will return at precisely the rate needed by the script. Worse, there’s not even any consistency in Olivia’s talents. It’s initially explained that she can receive messages from the spirits of the recently deceased. However, at the end, all of a sudden, live people are broadcasting to her as well, when necessary. It’s all immensely aggravating, and frequently took me out of the situation.
I did like Head’s performance, which puts across the nature of her character well, as slightly disconnected from conventional reality – wisely, she’s kept entirely in English. This does perhaps hamper Tsyganov, whose performance in a second language is clearly a couple of notches below that in his native tongue. Nobody else makes much of an impression, with the villain in particularly feeling underdeveloped before a late rush of information as to their purpose and motives. You get more dumbness there though: the killer leaving a flier around in his home for Rostov to find, revealing the location of his final sacrifice. All these elements more than negate the good work done on other areas of the production, and the end result is likely better left on in the background to provide pretty pictures, than given your undivided attention.