How 'El Conde' director Pablo Larraín uses horror to add thought-provoking bite to history

With his Netflix horror comedy “El Conde” (“The Count”), director Pablo Larraín uses a movie monster to satirize a real one.

Horror movies, from “Night of the Living Dead” to “Get Out,” have long tackled social issues and historical context of the day. But Larraín has become quite good at using metaphors, tropes and other elements of the genre in his historical biopics. His takes on Jacqueline Kennedy with 2016's "Jackie" and Princess Diana in 2021's "Spencer" are unfused with fear and trauma looking at the lives of two famous women, and with his latest, reimagining notorious Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire for a funny, gruesome, enlightening and thought-provoking farce.

Let's dig into how Larraín first brought horror and psychological complexity to his earlier dramas, and what makes the Spanish-language “El Conde” (now streaming on Netflix) both a Halloween-ready flick and a lesson about mankind.

Pinochet of 'El Conde' is a creature of the night who wants to end it all

First, some real history: In 1973, Pinochet led a military coup (encouraged by the U.S.) to overthrow Chile's government. The incident started a 17-year dictatorship that saw the torture, deaths and disappearances of more than 3,000 people. Pinochet died in 2006 without ever being brought to trial for those crimes, or the millions he stole in money-laundering schemes.

The Santiago-born Larraín’s alternate history posits that Pinochet (played by Jaime Vadell) never died. Instead, he’s a bloodsucking creature who lives in exile in the cold wasteland of southern Chile with his puppet-mastering wife Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer). “The General” wishes to end his eternal life, starving himself of blood, so the time comes sooner than later.

But his family has different plans: Lucia wants him to bite her so she can live forever, too – she’s also cheating on him with butler Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), Pinochet’s Russian right-hand man and fellow vampire – and his greedy grown kids are hanging around, seeking their millions in hidden inheritance money. The old man finds a new lease on life, however, when he meets and falls for Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger), a young French accountant who looks after Pinochet’s finances but is, in fact, an undercover nun sent by the Catholic Church to exorcise him.

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Pablo Larraín taps into the horror of an entire generation with 'Jackie'

Larraín brought a strong psychological horror bent to "Jackie," which garnered Natalie Portman a best actress Oscar nomination for her ambitious portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy. Revisiting the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, a period of trauma and grief for the first lady and an entire nation, this experimental character study examines Jackie’s private life in the emotionally wrenching days following her husband’s assassination.

The intense moments of the fateful day in Dallas are harrowing, as we all know the terror and carnage that's about to unfold. And Jackie is shown trying keep the top of her spouse's head intact after he's shot. Yet what comes next is brutally personal: In one memorable scene aboard Air Force One, Jackie weeps as she wipes blood off her face to make herself presentable for the swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson (John Carroll Lynch). Later, a still-shocked Jackie silently takes off her bloodstained suit at the White House and breaks down in the shower, finally able to grieve her loss.

'Spencer' is a ghost story of sorts starring Kristen Stewart's embattled Princess Diana

Labeled “a fable from true tragedy,” Larraín's 2021 drama is a fictional imagining of Princess Diana (Oscar nominee Kristen Stewart) navigating an isolating weekend with the British royal family during Christmas in 1991 at the queen’s annual holiday destination, Sandringham Estate. Diana is a haunted woman dealing with past ghosts and the unsettling present as part of the monarchy, where paranoia, anger and sadness are a regular part of royal existence.

While Diana's driven to a certain amount of madness, Larraín's crafted a surreal and fantastical environment around her: The locale gives off Overlook-from-"The Shining" vibes and Diana witnesses visions of herself and Anne Boleyn (!) as the claustrophobia of her situation takes hold. There's also a grim, knowing sense of foreboding that her own death is coming soon, which a happyish ending featuring KFC and Mike and the Mechanics can only do so much to combat.

'El Conde' uses scary-movie elements to examine real-life evil

Compared to Larraín's other films, "El Conde" is much more straight-up horror. The black-and-white cinematography mixed with fanged folks reminds us of Bela Lugosi's 1931 classic "Dracula," and images of Pinochet taking to the skies to hunt for food harkens even further back to the eerie nature of 1922's silent "Nosferatu." There's also a good amount of gore, from decapitated heads to icky heart smoothies guzzled right from the blender, in this absurdist story featuring a mystery narrator whose third-act reveal most won't see coming.

On a deeper level, Larraín shows the mundane pettiness of evil: "You can call a soldier a killer or whatever else, but not a thief," says the offended Pinochet, seemingly more OK murdering thousands than being called out for stealing – but also its cyclical nature and how it's reborn over and over again.

For Larraín, his main character is "a being that never stops circulating through history, both in our imagination and nightmares," he says in a director's statement. "Vampires do not die, they do not disappear, nor do the crimes and thefts of a dictator who never faced true justice."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'El Conde': Pablo Larraín's best movies meld horror and history