A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A calm, alluring & subversive art-house endeavour from Ana Lily Amirpour in what's her feature film debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is as impressive as it is unconventional, as beautiful as it is brooding, and as hypnotic as it is haunting. Touted as "the first Iranian vampire western", it is a fascinating blend of horror, romance & western that's original, meditative & masterly composed.

Set in an Iranian ghost-town that reeks of death & loneliness, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night tells the story of a lonesome vampire that wanders the desolate streets at night; stalking, killing or protecting whoever she deems fit. But things change when she comes across a guy who's just as lost as her and, in an effort to connect with each other, something beautiful is born between the two.

Written & directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is crafted with stunning restraint & presents the up-n-coming filmmaker in absolute control of her craft. Lily Amirpour's direction exudes both patience & confidence as she spins her own take on the vampire folklore with this twisted fable of two lost souls without giving in to genre conventions, and isn't afraid to employ silence as a powerful & effective tool.

For a debut feature, it is an incredibly sophisticated effort, and Lily Amirpour not only exhibits her firm grip on storytelling elements but all filmmaking aspects. The story takes place in Bad City, an Iranian town in the middle of nowhere, and the deserted locations, vacant streets & fraction of denizens add to its graveyard like aura while the resurfacing shots of drilling pumps perpetually sucking oil out of Earth serves as an interesting companion to its vampiric themes.

The script is only concerned with the doings of two characters, Arash & The Girl, and the rest of the town's inhabitants are discerned by simple tags assigned to them. What's also admirable is that it is never in a hurry to switch to the next moment and actually embraces the silence & emptiness that permeates every frame, which in turn contributes to its somber tone & funereal gloominess. But there are also times when its extended takes bring the narrative to a standstill.

Shot in crisp black-n-white, Cinematography brings an elusive quality to the whole picture with its static camera-work, skillful use of slow-mo technique & beautifully composed shots, and further intensifies its otherworldly setting. Another one of my favourite aspects is its mesmerising soundtrack, comprising of sensibly chosen tracks that are evocative and always in check with the emotional requirements of any given moment.

Coming to the performances, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night features a committed cast in Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marnò, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains & Rome Shadanloo, and each one of them get sufficient time on screen. Vand's subtle expressions & unwavering gaze turns her silent showcase into the most impressive performance in the movie and she is brilliantly supported by the rest of the cast, each playing their part with utmost conviction.

On an overall scale, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a somber effort that's elegiac in its approach, dreamlike in its presentation, and subdued in its addressing of topical themes. Crafted with care & intimacy, it promises an etherial, absorbing & aesthetically fulfilling experience to those willing to embrace its slow-burn narrative and marks a promising start to Ana Lily Amirpour's filmmaking career. Although its fangs aren't as deeply embedded as I would have liked, this thoughtful meditation on loneliness is still a delightful discovery that's worthy of a broader audience.

A slow-paced hipster-era vampire story that is so stylish it hurts. "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night" combines old-fashioned storytelling with contemporary setting and aesthetics, and the result is a quite unique and atmospheric film. It's not faultless but it feels very fresh and special.

Set in an oil industry ghost town-like city in Iran, this movie, directed by newcomer Ana Lily Amirpour - an American of Iranian descent - is highly reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's early style. Interestingly, in an interview between her and legendary producer/director Roger Corman on the DVD extras, she claims she's not much of a fan of Jarmusch. But as virtually everyone who studies film has pointed at the stylistic similarity, she's taking it as a compliment.

Like Jarmusch's work, the movie is shot in atmospheric black and white - and it works beautifully. The dialogue is all Persian (Farsi) - even though the movie was shot in America, standing in for Iran - and is subsequently sub-titled. However, this does not work against the film (whose strength is its visuals) at all, as the dialogue is at all times minimal and slow, thus making the reading easy and unobstructive to the fascinating camera work.

So, it's a horror movie. It's principal character is a Persian woman vampire - who stalks the town, robed in a black chador, which is quite an unsettling shadow to behold standing 10 feet away from a potential victim late at night. The events exist within a kind of imagined Iranian underworld of pimps, hookers, drug dealers and street urchins. Our vampire watches this dark town, at times slowly riding a skateboard down the street! When she interacts with people, she is unblinking, mostly un-verbal, and seems to be at all times appraising their circumstances and their worth.

Aside from the beautiful blocking shots and photography, a high point of the film is its use of sound effects, music (which sometimes references Morricone-like spaghetti westerns) and an impressive soundtrack of mostly modern pop music.

Any criticism of this movie (though it's more praised than not) seems to center around it being "style over substance" and "too slowly paced". Well, it is moody, that's for sure - and maybe too slow for many of today's horror fans, that's true - but there's no arguing that its greatest strength is its style.

"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" is an interesting movie. More a curiosity at moments than a movie with a body and a plot, it ends being saved by its atmosphere and the cinematography, even if some of its moments fall into the silly.

A vampire is roaming an Iranian town. She goes around killing 'bad' men, talking with people and just being very, very shy. She becomes friends with a young guy. Will she end up killing him?

Who are we kidding. The movie doesn't really care about vampires or anything. On the other hand, it has a very nice atmosphere and some of its aspects, like the music or the bleak black and white, give it an atmosphere close to a Western. The camera-work is good, and the direction acceptable enough. There are a couple of scenes really good. The acting, however, is a little bit stilted and, in a couple of occasions, just too silly. The vampire's movements are hilarious (not sure if on purpose).

"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" ends being a movie that will be enjoyed more by people who like their movies about atmosphere and 'messages'. Just forget about plot and pace.

SPOILER: I was a bit disappointed to learn after seeing A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night that it was not an actual Iranian film. Turns out it is entirely American funded and made in California, it's just that it has an Iranian director, crew and cast, while it is set entirely in the Farsi language. When I say I was disappointed it was only that I truly wanted to believe that a film with such frank scenes of sexuality was being made in Iran. There has been something of a surge in Iranian films in recent years, most prominently in the case of the excellent drama A Separation (2011) and I thought it could be possible that this was another in this cycle. Alas, but no. Still, that doesn't deter from the fact that this is a pretty singular bit of work. I suppose the very fact that it is an Iranian film made entirely with American money is in itself pretty interesting.

Like another of 2014's best horror films Honeymoon, this one is also directed by a woman. Ana Lily Amirpour is of Iranian descent but born in the UK and brought up in America. I guess because of her heritage coupled with the tensions between America and Iran, many meanings seem to have been interpreted in this film. I think the truth is that this is a film with some minor political undercurrents but which takes its influences far more from cinema itself. Set in a bleak dusty place called Bad City, a settlement full of drug addicts, vice and despair, it follows a small group of characters one of which is a female vampire who roams the streets at night preying on the worst in her society.

It wouldn't be unfair to say that this is an exercise primarily on style over substance. This doesn't bother me personally, as I enjoy films that embrace cinematic style. It's typified by great black and white cinematography with lovely widescreen framing. It is also a mash-up of film genres with a hero and car which evokes 50's teenage rebel films, Ennio Morricone inspired music that references spaghetti westerns, moments that recall the odd tone of David Lynch movies, the visual look of Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983) and the revisionist approach to the vampire film typified by Let the Right One In (2008). When you combine all of these disparate elements together in an American film shot entirely in Iranian, the result is a very odd film indeed. I guess you could call this a feminist vampire film, in that she only attacks predatory and immoral males, while she is quite far removed visually from the slinky female bloodsuckers from many a European vampire flick (although there certainly isn't anything wrong with them!). It also plays on the idea that the Hijab veil looks similar to the garb of those traditional vampires. It is also distinctive for having bizarre details such as a prominent cat, a skateboarding vampire and a soundtrack that mixes Persian music with new wave influenced western pop. The latter being a particular favourite of our vampire lady.

My feeling on the film overall is a little mixed. I really appreciated the visual style and the original aspects inherent in an Iranian vampire film, while the mix of genres did create something new. On the other hand, it begins very well and does meander in the second half somewhat. It would probably have worked better as a ninety minute movie given the slightness of the material itself. Still, it has to be praised for going somewhere new and it shows there is always a different way to approach old ideas.