El Conde (2023)
★★★ — El Conde (2023)
Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military dictator who ruled from 1973 to 1990, is one of the most divisive and notorious figures in twentieth-century Latin American history. His regime was responsible for thousands of deaths, disappearances, and cases of torture, and debates about his legacy continued long after his death in 2006. El Conde, released in 2023, takes that raw historical material and does something genuinely odd with it: it reimagines Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire, tired of the world and ready to die, while the greedy family gathered around him squabbles over what remains of his fortune. It is a fantasy horror comedy, shot in black and white, and it arrives with a tagline that leaves you in no doubt about the tone: "Things are about to get bloody."
The film comes from Chilean production company Fabula and was directed by Pablo Larraín, whose body of work is consistently preoccupied with power, politics, and the darker corners of Chilean society. Larraín has made a habit of finding unusual angles on historical figures and institutions, and if you want a sense of how he approaches that kind of material, there is a full write-up of his earlier film Ema elsewhere on the site. El Conde runs for 111 minutes and was shot by Edward Lachman, whose work gives the film a genuinely striking visual quality. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography, which tells you something about the ambition behind the production even if the genre packaging might suggest otherwise. The screenplay was written by Larraín alongside Guillermo Calderón.
The principal cast is largely drawn from Chilean theatre and film. Jaime Vadell plays Pinochet himself, with Gloria Münchmeyer and Alfredo Castro among those surrounding him in a household that is equal parts gothic manor and family dysfunction. Paula Luchsinger and Stella Gonet round out the key roles, the latter playing a nun whose presence in the story carries considerable weight. Chilean cinema has produced some genuinely strange and inventive work in recent years (the extraordinary The Wolf House is a good example of just how far filmmakers from the country are willing to push form and content), and El Conde sits comfortably within that tradition of bold, politically charged storytelling. For fans of fantasy with an unusual edge, it might also be worth glancing at the review of Viy, a very different kind of supernatural film but one that shares something of the same willingness to let horror and dark humour occupy the same space.
A-Z World Movie Tour Chile This was a really enjoyable film actually. Everyone's surely bored to tears with the same old vampire tropes. I'm actually really happy this film took a nice new spin on a classic, well-trodden foe. Blending real world people with fiction worked really well. At first I couldn't quite follow the story (a 200+ year old vampire is sick of life and wants to die, with his family arguing about inheritance) but there's a couple of really good twists which really work well. Cinematography was beautiful. The movie was actually nominated for an academy award for that. The soundtrack accompanied it well and the acting (especially from the Nun) was particularly strong.
For me, the nomination for cinematography really does feel earned on reflection. There is something about the black and white photography that turns what could easily have been a broad, knockabout satire into something with genuine atmosphere and visual weight. The political bite underneath the premise is hard to miss, but it never feels like a lecture, which is exactly the right balance to strike. A polished but purposeful piece of filmmaking, and one I am glad I did not skip past.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2025-06-06
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for El Conde (2023) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Chile: The Wolf House (2018) · Pamfir (2022) · The Family (2017)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More fantasy: Viy (1967) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
