When the Dead Should’ve Stayed Dead
There’s an old saying in horror: “If you’ve killed the protagonist twice and he keeps coming back, maybe you’re the villain.” Gogol: A Terrible Vengeance is the cinematic embodiment of that principle — a resurrection nobody asked for, dragging itself out of the coffin just long enough to bore us into the afterlife.
This 2018 Russian fantasy-action-horror-mystery-thriller (because apparently, it couldn’t pick one) marks the third and final entry in Egor Baranov’s Gogol trilogy. And much like its resurrected hero, it’s overstuffed, overlong, and badly in need of an exorcism.
It’s called A Terrible Vengeance, but the only real vengeance here is the one it takes on your patience.
Plot: The Dark Horseman Rides… in Circles
To say the plot is “busy” is like saying Russian winters are “a bit chilly.” It’s a narrative nesting doll — you keep opening layers of exposition, flashbacks, and ancient curses until you realize you’ve been holding an empty story all along.
We pick up where Gogol: Viy left off, with Nikolai Gogol (Alexander Petrov) — yes, the writer — back from the dead. And before you ask, no, there’s no subtle metaphor here. He literally claws his way out of his coffin like a gothic influencer looking for engagement.
The good people of Dikanka immediately assume he’s evil — and honestly, after three films, who could blame them? Enter Inspector Yakov Guro (Oleg Menshikov), back from the dead himself, because apparently mortality is just a plot inconvenience in this franchise.
Together, they try to unmask the mysterious Dark Horseman, a supernatural murderer whose identity has been teased since film one. Spoiler: when the big reveal comes, it’s not “shocking” so much as “mildly confusing.” The villain turns out to be Lisa, a character whose death was so forgettable that I had to check Wikipedia to remember she existed.
From there, the story does what all bad trilogies do — dig into ancient backstory no one wanted. Cue a 17th-century flashback involving Cossacks, Polish sorcerers, a cursed hoop, two sisters, and a centuries-long cycle of murder. It’s like Game of Thrones meets The Witcher if both shows were directed by someone on a sugar crash.
By the end, there are decapitations, reincarnations, magical hoops, demonic contracts, and a supernatural girl squad fight that looks like it was choreographed during a lunch break. Then, just when you think the movie’s finally over, Gogol goes back to St. Petersburg, publishes his book, meets Pushkin and Lermontov (yes, those Pushkin and Lermontov), and joins a secret society of writers who fight witches.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of a final boss battle that suddenly turns into an improv poetry slam.
Resurrected But Soulless
Alexander Petrov returns as Gogol, and while he’s a talented actor, this film gives him nothing but brooding close-ups and fainting fits. The man spends more time staring dramatically into fog than actually investigating anything. He’s less “writer-turned-detective” and more “emo poet who accidentally wandered into a haunted forest.”
Oleg Menshikov’s Inspector Guro fares slightly better, mostly because he plays the role like a man who’s aware he’s in a ridiculous movie and refuses to die until he collects his paycheck.
The rest of the cast exists largely to deliver cryptic lines about destiny, bloodlines, and curses that even Google Translate gives up on halfway through. Every conversation sounds like it’s one “dark prophecy” away from becoming a bad metal lyric.
Lisa, the surprise villain, gives us a performance so over-the-top that it borders on camp. She’s supposed to be terrifying; instead, she looks like a Halloween party guest who got lost on her way to a vampire convention.
Direction: All Style, No Story
Egor Baranov is clearly a director with visual flair. The movie looks expensive — there are fog machines, gothic cathedrals, and enough candlelight to make an entire generation of cinematographers swoon. The problem? All that atmosphere is wrapped around a plot with the narrative coherence of a fever dream.
The editing is relentless — a blur of flashbacks, visions, and fantasy sequences that make it impossible to tell what’s real. One minute you’re in 19th-century Russia, the next you’re fighting a Polish wizard from 163 years ago. It’s less Inceptionand more Inception performed by drunk theater students in a snowstorm.
And the action scenes? Imagine watching someone play The Witcher 3 but every time they swing a sword, the camera cuts to a raven screaming. It’s dramatic, sure, but after the fifth bird shriek, you start wishing for subtitles just to explain why.
The Horror: Less Fright, More Filler
For a horror film, A Terrible Vengeance is remarkably un-scary. There’s plenty of blood, sure — but gore isn’t frightening when it’s buried under exposition thicker than Siberian ice.
The Dark Horseman, once a genuinely menacing figure, now looks like he belongs on the cover of a 1980s heavy metal album. Every time he appears, you half-expect him to start a guitar solo instead of a killing spree.
The supernatural elements — witches, curses, talking heads — should be exciting, but instead they feel like leftovers from other, better movies. Even the jump scares feel tired, as if the ghosts themselves are just going through the motions.
The Script: A Novelist’s Worst Nightmare
If Gogol himself had seen this script, he’d have faked his death again. The dialogue is filled with overwrought declarations like “The curse of blood is the vengeance of love!” and “Immortality is the coffin of the soul!”—lines that sound profound until you realize they mean absolutely nothing.
The pacing is schizophrenic. The first hour crawls like a ghost with a limp, and the last thirty minutes cram in enough lore to fill a dissertation. Every time the movie hints at ending, another subplot rears its head, demanding attention like an unwanted sequel.
Even the central mystery — who is the Dark Horseman? — unravels with the emotional weight of a broken piñata.
Production Value: Gothic Glamour and Empty Calories
To its credit, A Terrible Vengeance is gorgeous to look at. The costumes are lush, the sets lavish, and the cinematography drenched in a moody palette that makes even the corpses look romantic.
But it’s the cinematic equivalent of an Instagram filter: beautiful, hollow, and trying way too hard to impress. The visuals are so polished they start to feel artificial — all smoke, no soul.
It’s as if someone fed a Victorian painting into an AI generator and asked it to make a movie “like Tim Burton, but make it Slavic.”
The Ending: The Curse of Infinite Sequels
The finale wants to be epic — a culmination of myth, mystery, and madness. Instead, it’s a buffet of loose ends, philosophical mumbo-jumbo, and a painfully obvious setup for a sequel that thankfully never materialized.
When Pushkin and Lermontov show up like Marvel post-credits cameos, you realize the filmmakers were aiming for a Russian Literary Universe™. Sadly, this universe should have stayed in the drafts folder.
Final Thoughts: A Vengeance Against Coherence
Gogol: A Terrible Vengeance is not a terrible film because it’s ugly or cheap — it’s terrible because it’s exhausting. It’s a Gothic opera with no melody, a horror saga where the scariest thing is the runtime.
It’s overblown, overstuffed, and overwritten — like someone tried to adapt War and Peace as a ghost story while blindfolded.
If the earlier Gogol films were flawed but intriguing experiments, this finale is what happens when you double down on style and forget story entirely. The result is cinematic necromancy: impressive to watch, but soulless at its core.
Final Rating: ★★☆☆☆
(Two out of five cursed quills — one for the pretty visuals, one for the accidental comedy, and none for making Nikolai Gogol wish for a second death.)
