‘Castlevania: Nocturne’ Is a Very Bad Vial of Congealed Blood

Netflix’s roster boasts a number of adaptations from literature and video games. Some are hits (Arcane), some are misses (Witcher). Netflix had also adapted Konami’s gothic horror 2D platformer video game series Castlevania.

The first adaptation did well enough and despite deviating from the source material, it introduced the dark world of Castlevania to a completely new audience. The four-seasoned series that ran from 2017-2020 announced that it would do a spin-off series — Castlevania: Nocturne. This spin-off would adapt the games Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and its sequel Symphony of the Night.

Castlevania: Nocturne dropped on Netflix at the end of September, just in time for spooky season to kick off.

This time, however, the reactions to the show have been mixed.

Before we get to Nocturne, let us briefly visit the source material that it is based on.

Rondo of Blood takes place in 1792 and has Richter Belmont, a vampire hunter braving the horrors of Dracula’s castle in order to rescue his lady love Annette, who has been captured by Dracula’s henchman Shaft. Along the way, he also rescues various women who have been held hostage in Dracula’s castle including 12-year-old Maria Renard and a nun named Terra. Depending on what choices Richter makes in the game, he kills Shaft or a freshly turned vampire Annette and ends Dracula.

Symphony of the Night takes place four years later when Richter mysteriously vanishes and Dracula’s Castle reappears. Alucard (yes that’s Dracula backwards), Dracula’s dhampir son, comes knocking at his dad’s doorstep wanting to kill him. Why? Because Dracula wishes to kill all of humanity as revenge for burning his human wife as a witch (she was a doctor). Castlevania’s Dracula may be considered evil by everyone but he really is just a very devoted husband. In Dracula’s castle, Alucard encounters Maria who’s looking for Richter and Richter (being controlled by Shaft) who plans to resurrect Dracula so they can fight for all eternity! Cutting the long story short, Alucard breaks Shaft’s hold on Richter, and confronts and defeats his dad, who begs forgiveness before Alucard kills him. Alucard, Richter and Maria escape Dracula’s castle as it crumbles.

Cut to the Netflix’s new series.

Castlevania: Nocturne is set in the backdrop of the French Revolution with spillovers from the Haitian Revolution. The only thing this has in common with the source material is that the characters have the same names and that there are vampires. It is understood that in today’s climate that stories must be tweaked in order to suit the palette of modern audiences but then that begs the question:

Why not just create an entirely new story with brand new characters? Why must an existing work be transmogrified?

If cashing in on a popular franchise is the reason, why not come up with something original say like Castlevania: Dawn of the Eternal Night or something? 

Nocturne has a lot going on and it is crammed into eight episodes so tightly that the coffin’s lid is flying off. Perhaps because it is only the first season and season two will correct this, but even so.

An indication of good writing is when you can even detest or empathize with a character conjured up from another’s imagination. Nocturne’s cast coated in hypocrisy makes you just groan in frustration. The good guys are inept and the bad guys are slightly less inept that by the end of the show, you end up regretting that Dracula’s plan of mass genocide did not work.

Let’s have a quick look at our heroes.

Richter Belmont who is the supposed protagonist is relegated to a side character and only shows some modicum of main character energy near the end. Towards the end, he gets an insane powerup which is useless as it does nothing against the main antagonist. Aside from his childhood trauma, he’s mostly colorless as a character.

Maria, for all her revolutionary ideals, is ready to help her father once she realizes her parentage. Her father, the Abbot hates the vampires but is willing to sacrifice his daughter to prove his loyalty to them. In the beginning, she’s an angry young girl whose existence is focused on the revolution. But the minute she learns that the man that she disliked, stood against everything she fought for and is a stooge for the vampires, is her father, she has a change of heart. Maria then foolishly goes to ask her father to join her. The latter is however quick to offer her up as a sacrifice, but her mother Terra (no more a nun as in the game!) intervenes and sacrifices her humanity to save her daughter from the vampires. Maria’s reckless actions are the reason her friends had to go engage in a fight they had no hope of winning.

Annette shares only her name with her video game counterpart. To be fair, in Rondo of the Night there’s not much to her character other than being the damsel in distress, so expanding on her character is a refreshing change. Nocturne’s Annette is an ex-slave from Saint Domingue and a descendant of the gods, Ogun (god of war and iron) and Orunmila (god of wisdom). She uses powerful Voodoo magic and exerts control over earth and metal. Due to her unfortunate circumstances, she’s grown up angry, unapologetic, hot-tempered and has a holier-than-thou attitude.

Annette would be the best character in the series, fleshed out as she is, if not for the fact that she never delivers. Stealth is not a word in Annette’s dictionary and neither is common sense, apparently. In her short life, she is responsible for the deaths of her mother and her friend Edouard. She had ONE job in the final mission — push a machine through a portal through hell — which she fails spectacularly. Her only win is killing the vampire who murdered her mother. A vampire whose death was justified because of his incompetence to tie up loose ends. Why wait for your opponent to grow powerful when you can nip the problem in the bud?  She criticizes Richter and calls him a coward for running away instead of rescuing Edouard but fails to mention that it’s her fault that Edouard got killed and turned into a night creature in the first place. Orunmila is the god of wisdom but his descendant has no shred of it. Somehow after all this, she and Richter develop feelings for each other.

In Nocturne’s quest to have strong female leads, all they have achieved is making them incompetent and foolish.

Speaking of strong female characters, this time the villain is Erzsebet Báthory. She is based on Elizabeth Bartley from the game Castlevania: Bloodlines and both iterations are in turn based on the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory. Elizabeth Bartley and Erzsebet Báthory both have a Drolta Tzuentes as their aide. Tzuentes is based on the real-life Hungarian lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth Báthory, Dorottya Szentes.

Erzsebet from Nocturne is quite a conundrum. She’s the Vampire Messiah who was allegedly roaming around ancient Egypt where she consumed the blood of Sekhmet. It was in ancient Egypt where she met Drolta Tzuentes, who despite her Hungarian name is supposed to be Egyptian and a priestess of Sekhmet. Erzsebet’s agenda is to plunge the world into eternal darkness and let her fellow vampires roam free and wild. At the end of the series, she even transforms into the Egyptian lion-headed goddess, Sekhmet.

The real Sekhmet, who is the daughter of the sun god Ra, is not associated with the night. She is associated with the sun and is a solar deity as seen by the solar disk that she wears as a headdress. Sekhmet is the vengeful manifestation of The Eye of Ra. She wields the powers of the sun, the hot desert flame. Sekhmet when depicted with her father is always shown the be the protector of the sun. If there was to be eternal night then where would Sekhmet draw her powers from?

Nocturne’s Sekhmet instead has the modus operandi of an entirely different Egyptian god, Apep. Apep is the giant serpent, the enemy of Ra who sought to prevent sunrise and was believed to be the cause of the eclipse by the ancient Egyptians.

If Erzsebet’s history is so deeply entwined with Egypt, why is she Hungarian? If representation was the reason to bring a twisted version of Egyptian mythology, why not have a completely Egyptian vampire with an Egyptian priestess instead of pseudo-Hungarians?

The same goes for Olrox, an ancient Aztec vampire. Orlox was based on the Symphony of the Night and was a nod to Count Orlok from Nosferatu. Vampires like Count Orlok of course have no place in Nocturne’s aesthetics where everyone looks fresh off the runway but it might have been a refreshing change to see homage to the original bald-headed, terrifying Orlok that Max Schreck portrayed in 1922.

Aside from the poor characterization and inconsistencies in plot, Nocturne’s script has a prolific number of expletives. There’s nothing wrong with dropping the occasional F-bomb but too much of it just makes the characters seem extremely juvenile. To quote Richter himself:

“I was going to say something witty and cutting and brutal before I finished you off. But fuck it.”

It is as though the show wants to prove that it is indeed an adult animation with its unnecessary inclusions of sex and swear words that don’t add anything to its narrative. Of course, even the original 2017 iteration of Castlevania had the same problem, so nothing new there.

To not seem overtly critical, character design is perhaps the only thing Castlevania: Nocturne has going for it.

Nocturne’s main problem is that it wears an ill-fitting face of an entirely different being. The skin is stretched so thin trying to contain its confusing plots that there are so many holes. It has been stapled together hurriedly without care and is tearing at the seams. In a quest to cater to the masses, it has haphazardly collected a bunch of concepts and ideas that tick the boxes and not checked whether or not they work, without checking the facts. Representation is a good thing but do it right.

If only the showrunners had been brave enough to fully take that leap. Set it in Saint Domingue with the plantation owner being the big bad evil vampire. Set it in ancient Egypt and have Apep as the Vampire Messiah who wants to plunge the world into darkness. Don’t rewrite an existing work, write something new while respecting the legacy.

On the bright side, the worst has already happened and going forward there is absolutely no way for Nocturne’s second season to make things worse. Right? Hopefully, Alucard’s appearance going forward will give Castlevania: Nocturne a chance at redemption. Stick to the original 2017 series, if you just want to watch Castlevania and not play it.