Viy



The students at a Kiev seminary are all sent home on break. While making their way home, three of them become disoriented at night and end up lost in the countryside. They take refuge at a nearby home. The old woman who lives there doesn’t seem too keen on them staying, but allows them to spend the night anyway, provided they all sleep in different locations. Not caring to spend the night out in the fields, the three of them comply.



During the night though Khoma, one of the monks in training, is visited by the old woman. After her seduction attempts fail her, however, she hypnotizes Khoma, jumps on his back and rides him like a horse out into the countryside, where they eventually gain flight and end up soaring overhead. Khoma, knowing a witch when he sees one, manages to break the spell and upon landing, proceeds to beat the witch with a log of wood, only stopping when she turns into a beautiful young woman.



Khoma freaks out and runs back to the monastery (because screw his friends, I guess?). But upon arrival he’s told that he’s being sent on an errand. Seems a wealthy lord from Kiev has requested his presence. For some reason, the lord’s dying daughter has specifically requested for Khoma to pray at her dying bedside. After much ado, Khoma makes it to the woman’s home, only to realize that not only has she already died, but she also happens to be the witch whose skull he tried to bash in. Naturally, Khoma wants to vamoose, but the girl’s powerful father demands that Khoma fulfill his daughter’s dying wish for him to pray for her soul, by having Khoma stand vigil over her body for the next three nights. The promise of money (and several guards) manages to keep him around, but the witch’s vengeful, undead soul promises to test his mettle for the next three nights.



Viy is a Russian fantasy/folk horror film from 1965, and is based on a short story of the same name by Russian novelist and playwright, Nikolai Gogol. His novella Viy, is probably most well known for being the inspiration for Mario Bava’s 1960 film Black Sunday, in which a witch who is killed by her brother returns centuries later to get her revenge upon his descendants. But THIS Viy is more of a direct adaptation of Gogol’s original tale. A tale that was, incidentally, supposed to be based on local Ukrainian folklore. But while Gogol himself notes that the Viy is supposedly supposed to be known as “the chief of the gnomes”, it turns out that no one has ever been able to figure out where the hell he got that information from. Because I guess gnomes as we know them don’t exist in Ukrainian or even Slavic folklore. Meaning Gogol just made the title character up for his story. Which, while an interesting thing to note, doesn’t end up being all that important, because whether or not a Viy is a legitimate folk figure or not, it’s not the main crux of the story. That has something to do with overcoming your fear, I suspect. And to be clear, the movie is a very entertaining little folklore tale. Though the movie does take its sweet little time to finally get to the true “meat” of the story.


Coffin surfing?

While I liked the movie, even I have to admit that much of the first half can be very, very slow. In fact, it feels like the first half hour is mostly comprised of traveling. First Khoma travels with his two companions to the farm. Then he’s traveling back to the seminary. THEN we get to see him shoved in a wagon against his will to go to Kiev, they stop to eat and sing and… Oh, look, MORE traveling. *groans* I mean, yes, there’s a flying sequence in there too, which is pretty neat for the time. But while spiffy looking, even flying can be considered a form of traveling. You don’t really get into the real core of the story until you’re nearly at the 30-minute mark, and considering that the film is only a little over 76 minutes long, that’s nearly HALF the film. That’s kind of a lot to have to put up with before the story finally starts rolling along.


Finally, some action!

HOWEVER, that said, I think it’s worth it to put up with the (sometimes excessively) slow start, because, at least if you like folklore tales like this, then the second half of the film will probably feel more than worth it. Each night Khoma gets locked in this church with the witch’s corpse, and each night he becomes progressively more and more tormented by this woman. First she’s just rising up and walking around trying to get him. But by the second night she’s levitating the coffin and trying to mow him over with it. And then you get to the third and… Well, lets just say that she essentially calls forth every hellish beast she can think of to try to kill this dude and you get to see some VERY creative special effects, costuming and make-up use in the process. Not only is it some pretty fun stuff for 1965, but everything looks really great (again, for the time), and the atmosphere is spectacular, because they made that old church look dark and dreary as hell. It’s all very moody, and ethereal, and highly effective for what they were going for. I liked it, and wished it lasted longer than the short 4 minutes we got of it.









Other than the pacing, the only other notable downside I noticed was that the subtitles on the version I watched (from Tubi, if it matters) were a bit… Iffy. Most of the time they were fine, if not occasionally a little too fast. But sometimes the timing was several seconds off, especially regarding things like background noises/sounds. So it would tell me things like [horses neighing] 3-4 seconds before I’d hear a single neigh from any horse.

The more annoying part though, was that sometimes they didn’t bother to translate what was being said. Mostly, this happened when characters were singing. So instead of simply translating the damn song, I’d get something along the lines of [singing Russian folk song]. Like, great. Thanks, movie. That’s WILDLY unhelpful. Especially when one of the songs being sung suddenly seemed to inspire Khoma to not be such a sniveling little dork and to do his frigging job. What did they say that caused him to jump up with newfound confidence? No clue, but it seemed important and it’s a shame the movie didn’t deign it important enough to tell me.



But EVEN MORE ANNOYING? Sometimes they didn’t even bother to translate when people were speaking! Maybe they were talking too fast for the translator to decipher it, or maybe they were mumbling or some shit. I don’t know. I don’t speak Russian. But I find it VASTLY frustrating when I have the subtitles turned on and someone says something and I’m greeted with, and I quote: (man in window speaks Russian). What th–…. SERIOUSLY!? Gee, thanks, translator person! I NEVER would have guessed that without your valuable input there. So, suffice it to say, I really hope there’s a better translation of this movie out there somewhere, because goodness, did this one make my eye twitch at several points.


Aurgh! Now I’ll never know what window guy wanted!

So, pacing issues and a few extreme subtitle annoyances aside, I walked away really liking Viy. It’s very charming and very dreamlike in places, almost like a high-production play of a fairy-tale set to film. And even though there’s a little too much padding added in to bump the time up to ‘feature length’, I think it’s still a fairly short, fun little ride. That said though, the pacing IS a bit of a drawback. And while I found most of the special effects to be charming, especially for a film from the 1960s, I’m sure people who are far more…intensely focused on such things will probably consider scenes of painted hands coming out of a forced perspective wall to be cheesy as hell. But hey, I liked it, so pfffft to those people. So if you’re like me and enjoy atmospheric fairy-tales and don’t mind doing a little reading, then go ahead and give Viy a shot. But if you’re looking for something more fast-paced and/or scary, then you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Viy is available on a variety of streaming services.

Viy is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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