Dracula

A raucous mélange of the demented and the degrading, indulging in the very garish, grotesque, X-rated madness it condemns.

Radu Jude’s gleefully stupid Dracula proves much too expansive — and much too invested in the centuries of barbarism that paved the way toward Silicon Valley — to be misunderstood as a simple rebuke against the grotesqueries of algorithmic image-making.

Jude forces us into discomfort, looping cultural critique into grotesque comedy. If he intended to hold a mirror to the digital age’s self-destructive behaviors, sucking identity, myth, even creativity into an algorithmic blender, “Dracula” surely succeeds. It’s rattling, ridiculous, and in its own way, wholly necessary, though not always sustainable over its nearly three hours of absurdity.

It sometimes seems as if each Jude film is almost to be viewed once only; if you press play again, or go to the cinema to see it a second time, there will be only a blank screen, as if Jude and his ragged company have folded their tents and vanished.

As often as you may be tickled by its fanged silliness, you’ll also be drained.

As Dracula wears on, its lack of focus starts to grate, while Radu Jude’s deployment of profane, disreputable dialogue and imagery starts to resemble a stylistic tic more than a genuine affront to his audience’s sensibilities.

Jude is an interesting, admirably unorthodox filmmaker who likes to push his viewers. Here, he simply punishes us.