Mudbrick

I do believe that "Mudbrick" might very well be the very first Serbian movie that I have watched.

When I stumbled upon the 2023 movie "Mudbrick" here in 2025 and seeing that it was a horror movie, then of course I opted to give the movie a fair chance, as I enjoy all things horror. Sure, I had never heard bout the movie prior to watching it, so I had no expectations. And in a sense, I suppose, writer and director Nikola Petrovic had every chance to entertain and impress me.

However, I have to say that I found the narrative and the script to be really boring, and I ended up tossing the towel in the ring and giving up on "Mudbrick" 56 minutes into the 87 minutes runtime. I was just simply bored senseless at that point. The script that writer and director Nikola Petrovic put together here utterly and completely failed to entertain me, much less capture my interest.

The only familiar face on the screen, for me at least, was actor Andrew Howard.

As for "Mudbrick" being a horror movie, well, don't get your hopes up. This was, at best, a slow paced dark drama.

If you enjoy horror movies, as I do, I would not recommend you to waste 87 minutes on watching this movie.

My rating of writer and director Nikola Petrovic's 2023 movie "Mudbrick" lands on a generous one out of ten stars.

This film is so cryptic that it doesn't even tell you what country it's taking place in. It doesn't tell you anything, really. There's also a lot of whispering and mumbling so you won't understand what little is being said either. Something about pagan worship amidst traditionally Christian people, which makes as little sense as the conflict regarding ownership over a worthless house. There are no scares in this film, there is no suspense to speak of, and there is no payoff for enduring the minimalist and confusing plot. The characters are poorly developed and annoying, making any emotional involvement impossible. Random surreal waste of time.

If you want HORROR, you won't get it here. This is an unwatchably drawn-out, all-talk no-bite family drama in which annoying characters wallow in endless scenes of rural misery, quarrels, torment, suffering, and misfortune.

If you want FOLK horror - you won't get that here either, at least not in a satisfactory form. The story is absurd: in a village in Eastern Serbia, the villagers worship ancient god Veles by praying to a wooden totem on a field, but also to a random tree outside the village, they keep wooden carvings with something they call Veles in their mudhouses, and they constantly repeat Glory to Veles!

If you want SERBIAN horror - you won't get that here either. The film is 95% in English, and 5% in MACEDONIAN, which is not spoken in the part of Serbia where this was shot.

Everything here is offensively fake, forced and unconvincing, starting from the very premise: namely, the father of a man who lived in London dies, and leaves him - a wretched mud hut in a dying Easter European village. And this guy comes from London to Serbia, to that wretched village, and decides to inherit that cottage, to live in it, even though his brother Jakov had always lived there with his wife and daughter!

The film is supposedly inspired by a true event - the only problem is that it happened after World War II, 80 years ago! In a time of post-war misery in some remote village, it made sense for two brothers to have a fierce and tragic quarrel over the inheritance of their father's mud house. Why would a Londoner in the 21st century fight with his own brother in some shithole in the mountains about some mudbrick house - the film doesn't even hint at that. It's taken for granted!

Various things are thrown in this muddled plot, but the execution is unskillful and confusing, so that they produce frustration and alienation, rather than mystery and involvement of the viewer. Instead of horror, we have an unconvincing, rambling and repetitive drama without any receptive elements. Instead of drama we have motivational and character confusion where people do unmotivated and STUPID things all the time, with no consequences.

I really love movies i've seen this compared too such as wicked man or midsommar, but those made sense. They had pace, slow pace but methodical. This seems like there are hints at a message the whole movie, without any practical meaning. I understand you can be vague with folk lore, especially with modern morality involved, but the audience still needs to understand what's going on. Enjoyed some of the ideas, but just never came together in my opinion. Acting was not the problem, but some parts of the script was rather clunky. I wish i had better things to say about this movie because i like supporting movies like this, but it honestly fell flat on so many levels. Cheap visuals, cheaper blood stains. Decent acting, sub par dialogue. Incohesive story tale, incohesive script.

This slowburn dark folk (not really a) horror tale plays out in a small, derelict village in a pleasant but rather impoverished part of southeastern Serbia, in southeastern Europe. Through nice photography we are witnessing this family drama basically, encompassed by tacked-on pagan/Slavic symbolism and mythology, even some kind of a ''pagan'' cult (which doesn't make too much sense since the Orthodox Christianity in Serbia is already inherently merged with the old Serb/Slavic faith through Saint-Savaism).

Anyway, the decrepit village and eponymous mudbrick house look authentic here, since this ancient type of house-building (with mud as a binder) - can still be seen - or are refurbished for modern rural living, - in different parts of the country. What isn't too realistic though, is the family's grip on this grandfathers run-down old house in the countryside, and to see the brother (Paul) coming down from london like he inherited a castle, makes for a bit dubious premise, and the movie doesn't really offer a secret reason why the house is so much important to them. The other brother (Jakov) is played averagely by Andrew Howard (from a nice little film Mr InBetween, and here he looks and speaks like Niko Belic for some reason, which is fine by me). The rest of the cast, whom I've only seen for the first time here, are equally average.

Film's early promising, but ultimately unfulfilled vague 70's folk horror-reminiscent/pagan aesthetic doesn't offer much, and it barely, let alone deeply, touches upon it and nothing seems really dangerous nor frightening, which is the biggest deficiency here. One wonders if the creators actually even wanted this to be marketed and even made, as a truly 'horror' film, or merely a tribute to the older homegrown folk stories.

It did look nice though, didn't drag too long and I certainly appreciated the effort.

5.8/10.