This is a spoiler-free review of Castlevania: Nocturne, which is now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix's Castlevania: Nocturne has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor, the Warren Ellis-scripted, Adi Shankar-produced Castlevania, set a lofty precedent for adaptations of Konami’s influential platformer, capitalizing on the franchise's emphasis on action and horror without neglecting vital character arcs. It's wild, then, that not only does Nocturne rival the quality of what came before it, but it also kickstarts one of the franchise's most conceptually fertile stories to date. Sure, showrunners Clive Bradley and Kevin Kolde look to the classic games Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night for some of Nocturne's broader beats, but the various liberties they take help mold this adaptation into its own animal.
While Nocturne’s historical backdrop is far more intriguing than its plot – which doesn’t amount to much more than a revenge tale – it all works. The Belmont family’s ancient war against the vampires has entered a new phase, which means new characters, new villains, and fresh emotional baggage. The Belmont we meet this time is a 19-year-old hothead named Richter (voiced by Edward Bluemel), who travels from Boston to France to help a ragtag group of freedom fighters exterminate vampires participating in the French Revolution.
Erzsebet Báthory (Franka Potente), the real-life noblewoman and suspected serial killer plucked from the history books and fitted with fangs for this interpretation, is eager to make a case for herself as the next big bad. Dubbed the “Vampire Messiah,” Báthory revels in the weight her presence carries, and laps up her victims’ despair as greedily as she siphons the blood from their throats. Even more chilling than her bloodlust is Potente's voice performance, which drips with an almost nonchalant cruelty characteristic of only the most depraved creatures.
The monsters of Castlevania: Nocturne are every bit the toothy wraiths we've been conditioned to root against; impressively, though, they reinforce the beautifully on-brand good vs. evil binary underpinning these kinds of stories without ever feeling devoid of presence or purpose. The Vampire Messiah exhibits power and cruelty that justify and explain the hype surrounding her arrival, even if by every other token she's a sloppy copy of every power-hungry final boss ever conceived. Put a tad more simply: They’re shamelessly one-note and it works for them.
Cookie-cutter villains have their uses, though! Irredeemably evil vampires make likable heroes not just a probability, but an inevitability; when a show’s yin is a pointy-haired vampire queen who eats children and waxes poetic about plunging the world into eternal darkness, its yang has plenty of moral wiggle room. The question instead becomes: What's interesting about the people we’re supposed to like? What sets Richter and his friends apart from other franchise staples such as Trevor Belmont?
I’d be remiss not to mention the action sequences, which were a highlight in the previous series and quickly establish themselves as some of Nocturne’s strongest elements. Its best fight sequence, a set of claustrophobic duels in an underground cell block, showcases the animation’s fluidity while ratcheting up the tension and pushing certain characters toward important junctions in their respective arcs. The showrunners understand the importance of action as kinetic character development and reinforcement. That doesn’t, however, detract from its surface-level appeal. The art style never looks better than when it’s used to throw impossibly fast, preternaturally skilled characters into combat, and that’s almost certainly by design.
