El Conde, the latest from Pablo Larraín, best known for his portraits of history’s haunted women, Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021), is a punchline delivered with the cadence of a howl. It’s a vampire story, in which the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who terrorised Larraín’s native Chile from 1973 to 1990, is cloaked, fanged and transformed into the habitual blood-guzzler of Bram Stoker’s imagination.
The film’s political outlook is a little fuzzy – or, at the very least, lacking the insight and urgency of Larraín other films about Pinochet’s reign, Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), and No (2012) – but it bleeds pure, righteous bitterness. Larraín jumps at the chance to turn political ideology into a literal horror show. We see Pinochet, on the hunt, silently gliding above downtown Santiago.
