A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

The coolest movie since..... Only Lovers Left Alive?

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a really wonderful debut feature from Ana Lily Amirpour (her next movie has an impressive cast btw, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey. NICE). It's very moody, slow, always extremely cool and sometimes creepy. I need to get that soundtrack.

If you're a fan of Jim Jarmusch, Nicolas Winding Refn and black & white photography this movie is a must watch for you. There's hardly anything like it so if you want to see something different I can't recommend it enough.

I heard about this film a few years back, and finally got to watch it last night. It honestly had me feeling some type of way after. While it was released in 2014, it’s definitely the highlight for me this year. In my opinion, its beautifully written, and has some stunning shots in black and white. I highly recommend watching it, if you haven’t already.

If you don't know about it, it's an Iranian black and white vampire western and it was without a doubt the best movie I watched last year. I was captivated within 5 mins and didn't move until it finished. Really loved it. If you can get past the one inch high barrier of subtitles you might just be in for a treat. Watch it and let me know what you think. Trivia: was actually filmed in California.

I was expecting a far more conventional film, but every aspect of it was disarming. The use of symmetry, the decision to shoot in black and white at night, and the use of music were all alienating. I felt like I was in a trance. Shelia Vand does an incredible job as The Girl. It's insane how effortlessly she goes from a sympathetic loner to an almost incomprehensible monster. The whole tone is unreal. Arash' aesthetic can dunk on anything to be found on .

Also they credited the cat, which is a major plus.

A few nights ago I sat at the back of the cinema I work projection at during our first screening of this Iranian vampire film (I'm dropping the "western" part of the overused description that has been hovering over the film's marketing thus far) to test the volume and picture for subsequent screenings. After the first few minutes though, I was hooked and ended up sticking around for the almost two hour running time, only jumping back into the booth as soon as the credits rolled. I couldn't tear myself away from the stark emptiness of the cityscape that merged so tenderly with the film's lonely, disassociated characters, and the blend of horror and romance that, for once, . The characters in this film feel at once explicitly real whilst being pulled from the annals of cinema history and thrust into a new, unpredictable landscape with the black and white working to make everything seem that little more desolate, that little more desperate although the colours are far from monotonous....

You know you've enjoyed a film when parts continue to float back to you in the subsequent days in hazy images of black and white but, no matter what I do, I can't seem to pinpoint any textual meaning behind the film other than it being an exercise in style and emotive frequency. but is she saying anything with this film that hasn't been said in previous iterations of the vampire mythos? Ideas of love, loneliness, kindered spirits, sacrifice and vengeance are all explored but without any true originality.

For the record, I think this analytical simplicity works in the film's favour as it is totally clear that Amirpour is more interested in tone and style (a la Lynch or Jarmusch, the two directors that this film has drawn the most comparisons to). But for an Iranian film, albeit produced and filmed in California, with a female lead character, I was expecting more subtext than I got. Amirpour herself seems just as unconcerned with interpretations, stating things like

"It was a thing where I wanted to do this Iranian vampire film, but it wasn't going to be in Iran and then it was like no, it's going to be in my own place. An invented place. I'll make my own place. A film gives you a wonderful opportunity to do that, and then it's limitless, too, because it's just a fairytale and a fantasy and it can be anything you want."

When asked whether she considered the film to be a feminist film (which I saw very little evidence of myself), Amirpour stated:

"Personally, I find that these philosophies are the disease for which they claim to be the cure. I am afraid of categorization in general. I don't really see a usefulness to it. For me, what it does is it stops thinking....I am not trying to speak for anyone or give answers to anyone other than myself. I'm more interested in asking questions than finding a specific answer."

whilst her star, Sheila Vand, said

"It really didn't come into play for me. [The character] is a girl, but it's not about her being a girl, in the same way that the movie is set in Iran, but it's not about Iran. But there is a tendency, for whatever reason, for people to want to understand things via these tropes. I guess it's legitimate, whatever your interpretation is your interoperation, but for me it's like a film is meant to be experienced. The movie is the movie. The movie isn't all these other things that are around it."

But we all know that film is there to be interpreted by an audience rather than its value rest solely in the hands of the authour. So did anyone on TrueFilm see A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night and find anything a little deeper than I did?

The full interview with the director and star can be found .

What makes the [2014-2015 horror films] () so good is that they are proactive and take old tropes and make them new. I love that there are new stories and the directors are attempting to make good films and not just horror fodder. The Rotten Tomatoes critical average for the 10 films listed above is 90.5. That is crazy rare for horror. Also, Five of the top 10 [critically rated horror films of the 21st century] () have been released in 2014-2015 .

I don't think they will have the lasting appeal of the 1970's horror films but I appreciate that new stories are being told well. I think my favorite of the bunch is [Cheap Thrills] (). It is a really good movie with some solid villains.

My favorite era of horror is 1968-1978. During that time Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary's Baby, Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Jaws, The Omen, Suspiria, Carrie, Last House on the Left and Invasion of the Body Snatchers were released. You can't beat that.

Wanted to love this movie so much because it’s stylistically perfect, but I felt like it could’ve done so much more with character/plot development. I’m interested to know what other people who have seen this film think!

Drinking And Screaming published their latest episode, and they dive into the indie 2014 Iranian feature "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night". It's Amirpour's first feature film, and it is so exquisite.

I absolutely love this film, and I'm so happy that it's getting more exposure recently in top 10 indie lists and the like. There's something so whimsical and yet so deadly about The Girl. 10/10 well made film.

You can listen to the podcast here:

There's a fun game to be played in pretending that "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" is prequel, an origin story of sorts, to 2013's "Only Lovers Left Alive." If for no other reason than that there is so much promise squandered in this newer film, one desperately wants to imagine both the characters and the film itself growing up some day into something worthwhile. The pace of the two films is similar; but while Jim Jarmusch's captured his lovers in rich, warm color, lush and languorous, this film is merely languid, with characters that come across as pale as, well, a vampire filmed in black and white.

One notable difference: the lovers in "Lovers" had a reason for their lethargy. They were age-old and world-weary, which suffused the film with a contemplative pathos. This vampire has no such excuse: she is, as far as we can tell, young and vibrant. Actually, we don't know that for a fact. We are given maddeningly little information about her in any regard: who she is, where she comes from, even the barest hints about her motivation are all left conspicuously unaddressed. We know she's a vampire because she has sharp teeth, but cinema history is glutted with vampires of all shapes and colors, and a viewer can be forgiven for feeling slighted at being given so few clues about where to place this particular vampire on the spectrum.

What we do know about her, at least, is that she is young enough to be unsure of herself. When one of her targets, meeting her for the first time after an ecstacy-fueled night of dancing, starts to woo her with genuine tenderness, she is caught off-guard. She falls for him, and she seems rattled by it. He is shaken by the experience as well, in the way that only a young lover can be. They banter back and forth, they court, she tries to warn him off by vague allusions to "bad things" she has done in the past (he isn't even slightly curious about what kind of things she means, which might explain why the director thought his audience wouldn't be all that interested either). Eventually, through a series of events so contrived they make the whole "vampire" element seem mundanely plausible in comparison, the young man is confronted with the full horror of his new love's crimes, and...he kind of just shrugs it off. Oh well, he says without words. My new girlfriend's [SPOILER ALERT!!] a vampire that just killed my dad, guess it's time to drive off into the sunset without talking about it.

About that whole "not talking" thing: this movie is stingy to a fault with dialogue. This movie is a sparse as "Lovers" was luxurious, and that's a bad thing. The performances are all top notch: the male lead Arash (Arash Marandi) is by turns full of smoldering fury and disarming charm. The Girl (played by Sheila Vand, I realize now that she is never actually given a name in the movie) is appropriately, unsettlingly feral. But too often we are asked to infer or guess things about the characters that really would be better clarified. The movie's climax suffers in particular: we can assume that there is some inner turmoil at the final, horrid revelation. Arash stops and exits the car they are sharing, and gets out, and we expect an explosion, or a passionate forgiveness, or...anything really. What we get is nothing. He gets back in the car, and they start driving again off into the moonset. No words are exchanged, just some last, artsy shots of the cat that they're dragging along, and the movie finally becomes the perfume commercial it's been flirting with for 90 minutes.

About that cat. IMDB trivia has this nugget of info:

"The cat (Masuka) was not originally written in the script but Amirpour was so impressed by his skills that she put him in the film."

This one catnip-flavored tidbit summarizes so much that is found wanting in this film. It does indeed feel like somebody took a halfway-interesting coming-of-age/monster-movie mashup, slapped on some needlessly formal "artistic" touches, and walked away patting themselves on the back, impressed with their own cleverness. This is the kind of movie that people make fun of when they make fun of pretentious "art house" fare. There are many shots that seem portentous, but aren't, hinting at interesting connections that are then never connected. Early in the film, we see Arash's junkie father sticking a needle between his toes. Later, a scene where Arash notices that The Girl's ears aren't pierced, and he, ironically, ends up piercing her. These are fun ideas, hinting at some kind of thematic resonance that never materializes. And that damn cat. So many strategic close-ups of the cat seem to want us to make a connection between this animal, and the wide-eyed hunter that The Girl is. But what does that connection mean? How far are we to take the simile? Because we are told so little about The Girl's past, and shown such a shallow cut of her present, such questions remain like the rest of the movie: an interesting exercise in guesswork.

At first glance, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has the trademarks of a typical pretentious indie film. However, the movie’s stylistic choices and deft execution makes it a worthwhile cinematic experience.

The movie, which calls itself a western vampire, presents conventional elements in its own unique way.

It’s set in a place called Bad City, which could be Iran or Detroit but open to interpretation. The place looks deserted and has a ditch of dead bodies that people nonchalantly pass by.

It’s stalked by a female vampire who is an anti-hero and a feminist avenger (the M.R.As would be relieved to know that not all men here are portrayed evil, while women will be happy that the movie passes the Bechdel test). The girl forms a few non-predatory relationships along the way but does not lose her identity. The movie focuses on her interaction with other characters and does it in interesting ways that still contributes to the story. In one scene that flips their dynamic, she lets Arash – a handsome guy who has fallen for her – pierce her ear with a safety pin which he sterilized with his lighter so that she can wear his gift – a pair of earrings he stole from an employer.

The plot develops at a glacial space but presented beautifully. The dull monochromatic cinematography is compensated by camerawork, lighting, and effects to sustain its eerie mysterious mood, reflect the inner thoughts of its characters, and aspire for iconography. In another scene, the girl listens to Arash’s beating heart while Death by White Lies (whose lyrics fit the moment) play in the background and a spinning disco ball throws flashes of tinkling lights overhead.

The cast all did very well with what they’re given. There’s not much characterization here, but the movie imbues them with qualities that still makes their roles interesting and sympathetic. The vampire is a lonesome young woman but she’s not burdened by immortality and ennui. Arash is a handsome James Dean wannabe who owns a vintage Thunderbird and lives with his drug addict father. The supporting characters are given enough details to make them believable people stuck in a ghost town.

While all of this make for a great artful cinema with catchy tunes even in a foreign language, its easy for anyone to see A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night as nothing but one those artsy-fartsy films that critics rave about but no one can make sense of.

It’s tediously slow with characters that you can barely care about. Whatever fearful events that transpires in its mostly uneventful plot is generic vampire activity. Those with a short attention span who couldn’t care less about mood lighting would consider this overrated. The movie also tends to get lost in its own world, with scenes similar to the music montages used by American indie films in an attempt to make themselves look artistic and use it to fill the running time.

On the other hand, those who have seen Only Lovers Left Alive and sat through a David Lynch movie and unironically appreciate them, will find it rewarding. While it’s true that the movie prioritizes imagery over everything else and borrows from other genres, its consistent and brilliant execution makes it endearing, especially for those who have a wider film palette.

Like its protagonist, the movie knows exactly what it is and what it’s supposed to do. It’s a cinematic expression of loneliness, isolation and exile. The director – Ana Lily Amirpour – who is an Iranian born in England and raised in the US, may also be drawing from her experience. The movie (which blends some American pop culture references and Iranian culture) also speaks about the existence of a person who lives in an adopted homeland but still tethered to her roots – floating along in her own kind of Chador.

It will certainly garner some well deserved attention for the director. Unfortunately, its sad to know that a white male indie director will get bumped faster into big features instead. Nonetheless, Amirpour’s directorial debut is still a showcase of her talents that serve as a worthy credential to her resume.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the first Iranian Western vampire after all – a romance story set in a desolate landscape once stalked by an outlaw who changes the lives of its unfortunate inhabitants forever and rides away into the night.

My Rating: 8/10 For more reviews, explore:

There's so much to love.

- It's an Iranian-American vampire romance, even for those against vampire romances (present company included). Heartstrings were definitely pulled.

- Creative amalgamation of genres including noir, spaghetti western, German expressionism, and 50s American teen drama.

- Excellent selection and implementation of music—new wave and Persian pop, mostly. The director was a DJ at one point, so she knows what she's doing there.

- Gorgeous, crisp, and inspired black and white cinematography. The film also has one of my favorite opening sequences in recent memory.

- Fierce and deftly executed feminist through-line. (There also seems to be a startling complex critique of non-intersectional feminism mediated through a critique of capitalism, but I may have read too much into it. Besides, this isn't the place to boor you with my take.)