Empire 2023

Set in contemporary Moscow, Empire V unfolds as a lush fantasy vampire love story paired with a sharp, sardonic portrait of Russia’s power elite. It presents a world where beauty, blood, and money are the currencies that rule society, and where the glamorous surfaces mask a far more perilous undercurrent. At the center is a 19-year-old named Roman, an ordinary young man who feels like a perpetual outsider and who is lured by a street graffiti promise of a brighter future. That promise pulls him into a trap: he is drugged, seized, and brought to a luxurious mansion where he finds himself restrained and immobile, a captive of a vampire bound by a grim rule—the power to pass on his abilities only through a ritual that ends in suicide after losing a vampire duel.

The transfer introduces a peculiar parasite known as The Tongue, a worm that makes Roman the new host and thrusts him into the world of the secret elite that governs the globe. He is soon confronted by a mentor figure, Mithra, whose initial indifference masks a deeper, more complex agenda. Roman is renamed Rama, and he learns that the Tongue is less a parasite and more a symbiotic passenger with objectives of its own. In this layered order, vampires do not drink blood in the conventional sense; instead, when they sample what is called the Red Liquid via the Tongue, they soak up the donor’s knowledge and memories—an unsettling form of collective cognition that powers the ruling class.

Through this transfer, Rama begins a rigorous education that blends mystery with power. He is taught the twin disciplines of Glamor and Discourse, tools designed by vampires to blind humanity to their true aims by steering the public’s attention toward wealth and surface spectacle. The training montage is kinetic and surreal, featuring a dazzling sequence of vampire kung fu, a high-velocity car chase through Moscow, and even a moment with a rubber sex doll that sits at the edge of the film’s more sensational flourishes. As Rama explores his new abilities, he experiences his first bite of a human prey and discovers how the Tongue allows him to peer into the victim’s innermost memories, a rush that blends power with a troubling sense of manipulation.

Doubt about this new life begins to gnaw at Rama, and the narrative hints at a higher test to come. He learns of something called The Great Fall, an initiation that he will share with another initiate, Hera. Their online meeting marks a new turn in their fates, as they drink from the same mysterious liquid and recite the words that unlock the next stage of their powers. The moment of flight arrives when Rama, after uttering the line, “Into darkness, backwards and downwards!” assumes a bat-like form and soars over the glittering Moscow skyline. The two initiates converge at a deep, remote cave on the city’s edge, where the adult vampire Enlil—the managerial figure at the top of this clandestine hierarchy—awaits. Hera notes, with a touch of humor, that Enlil bears a resemblance to a vampire from the cinema, to which Enlil responds by highlighting how vampires around the world frequently bankroll vampire movies, blending myth, reality, and media into a single, interlocking system of influence.

As the story unfolds, the balance between romance and satire becomes increasingly charged. Rama and Hera’s bond develops against a backdrop of opulence, conspiracy, and a civilization that rewards spectacle as much as it does survival. The film’s mood remains cool and observational, never losing sight of the ethical questions at its core: what happens when power is acquired through the absorption of another’s memories, when beauty becomes a weapon, and when loyalty is redefined by a parasitic partner that seeks its own future? The result is a world that is as darkly funny as it is hypnotically perilous, a mirror held up to a society where the most intimate acts—love, memory, and ambition—are mediated by a secret that refuses to stay in the shadows.