‘Castlevania: Nocturne’ Season Review: Violence Made Beautiful

“Castlevania” is a franchise of video games penned in blood, featuring dances choreographed with flashing blades and trailing viscera, sorrowful arias wrought with despair, and magnificent costumes fit for vampire princes. Both the games and the previous Netflix series follow the Belmont family, a lineage of magical, whip-wielding vampire hunters. “Castlevania: Nocturne,” is not afraid to proclaim the hidden beauty of the grotesque. Through the show’s extended exploration of liberty, the audience is presented with a story that, despite occasional narrative blunders, is deeply moving and endlessly spectacular.

The season begins with a brief vignette set in Boston, Massachusetts at the end of the American Revolutionary War, following the protagonist Richter Belmont (Edward Bluemel) when he was just 10 years old. His youthful confidence and denunciation of evil stands in sharp contrast to his mother, Julia Belmont’s (Sophie Skelton) defeated attitude as she attempts to herd him towards a ship bound for the Old World. Faces lit by striking flashes of color as fireworks proclaim the newfound freedom of America, the pair is suddenly ambushed by a superbly dressed vampire named Olrox. After a vicious battle between Julia and Olrox, Richter’s mother is suddenly struck dead, a shower of blood and viscera erupting from her body as she is impaled by a thick talon. Richter watches her body fall to the ground with a dull, unceremonious thud. The vampire slinks away as a cloud of black mist after promising to kill the boy after he’s had time to fester in and suffer from trauma, allowing Richter to escape for France while setting the stage for a tale of revenge, trauma, and unending cycles of violence.

Throughout the next two episodes the audience is introduced to the main cast through a series of vignettes thematically connected by loss and pain. Maria (Pixie Davies), Richter’s adoptive sister, is a young girl who organizes clandestine meetings in support of the French Revolution, and summons mythical creatures to defend her bloody ideals. Annette (Thuso Mbedu), a Haitian revolutionary, recounts her harrowing escape from slavery. Finally, the tragic Edouard (Sydney James Harcourt), a heroic opera singer who helped Annette regain her freedom, is murdered and turned into a vampire by a pack of grotesque night creatures. The brisk pace of their introductions combined with their narrative proximity has the effect of cheapening their stories somewhat, with uniquely tragic backstories blending into each other as homogenous backgrounds of trauma. This issue hints to a pattern throughout the rest of the season, in which landmark character events are not given the time they need to properly blossom into a fully impactful scene.

The show uses this cast to explore the theme of freedom in all its variations and limitations. Institutional oppression is explored through the heroes’ fight against the vampires, a group in league with both the aristocracy and the immensely powerful church. Though every foe they face is incomprehensibly powerful, whether it be vampires, slavers, or the aristocracy, each character in turn finds comfort in companionship and music, paving the way for the keystone theme of the show’s production: art as resistance. Edouard is the most obvious illustration of this theme, utilizing his unparalleled operatic talents both as a front for securing the freedom of escaped slaves and as a catalyst to spur desolate and broken bystanders to action. Annette reflects this as well, using both her mother’s lullabies and musical incantations passed down from her ancestors to manifest immense magical power. Her manipulation of stone and metal directly reflects this process of creation and uses it to fight back against the villains who threaten her loved ones. The connection between her magic and art is reinforced in moments of peace when she uses it to form stone busts of her friends and other earthen portraits.

Each character is adorned in attire fit for a stage, replete with vibrant colors and shining trinkets. The vampires are especially striking, garbed in opulent dresses that sparkle in the moonlight with emerald earrings that match their eerie, lime eyes. Even the night creatures, human souls dragged from the pits of hell and placed into grotesque, monstrous bodies, are almost hauntingly beautiful with their flesh and bone facsimiles of tailcoats and crowns.

The settings are built to match, featuring magnificent landscapes rendered in an impressive variety of styles. Scenes linked to the Revolution or moments of peace free from oppression are almost impressionist in their use of color and light. As Maria buries a beloved pet she summoned to help fight anti-revolutionary vampires, she is framed by a beautiful natural setting aglow with the warmth of the setting sun. Other scenes depart sharply from this serene beauty, with heavily distorted figures rendered in nightmarish cool colors. The dexterity with which the show moves between art styles to achieve different tones is as effective as it is impressive.

The action sequences are not only viscerally satisfying to watch thanks to weighty sound-design and deft camera movement, but stunningly beautiful, boasting an array of vibrant colors and well-composed frames. In a battle beneath an abbey, the cast of heroes finds themselves locked in a deadly fight with vampires and night creatures alike. The camera nimbly follows the movements of each character, darting between blow after blow as it jumps from one character to the next. Each hit is felt by the audience as slashes are accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh while brutal punches shatter bones with a sickening crunch. The scenes, though harrowing, are savagely beautiful and easy to follow thanks to their fluid movements and striking use of color.

Finally, perhaps the crowning achievement of the show is its use of music. Many pivotal scenes are set against a backdrop of haunting diegetic arias belted out by Edouard. Whenever present, his voice takes command of the scene, lending the action, no matter how grotesque, a sickeningly beautiful grandeur. The orchestra is similarly impressive, featuring clean renditions of iconic pieces of chamber music and dextrous violin solos that accompany high intensity moments.

Despite the artful presentation, the narrative occasionally falters. The dialogue is often irreverent to the point of being reductive, with misplaced expletives ruining otherwise serious moments. Defining character moments such as deaths and flashbacks are sometimes not given the time they need to be effective, and character motivations sometimes go unexplored. However, despite these missteps, the story is incredibly compelling, boasting sympathetic characters that, through their history and heart-wrenching voice acting, can bring the audience to the point of tears.

The first season of “Castlevania: Nocturne” is strong, boasting incredible visuals with a moving narrative that, though imperfect, is still powerful. Despite the story being weaker than its Netflix predecessor, it far exceeds the previous installment in its animation and music. Even after the finale wraps up its bloody symphony, viewers will be eager for a second season that will see the heroes finally stand toe to toe with their nightmares made flesh after a season of build-up.