A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT
NIGHTÂ (18)
D: Ana Lily Amirpour
Vice/Logan/Spectre Vision (Justin Begnaud, Sina Sayyah &
Elijah Wood)
USA/Iran 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 2014
101 mins
Horror
W: Ana Lily Amirpour
DP: Lyle Vincent
Ed: Alex O'Flinn
Sheila Vand (The Girl), Arash Marandi (Arash), Mozhan Marno
(Atti), Marshall Manesh (Hossein), Dominic Rains (Saeed)
'Iran's first vampire movie' so the marketing would have us
believe, though the film was financed and shot wholly within the United States, the only real connection it has with Iran is the spoken language (Persian) and the nationality of the cast and
film's debutante director.
The burka-wearing girl of the title is a vampire, prowling the
dimly-lit streets of Bad City and preying on men who mistreat women, especially drug dealers and junkies.
Though the film does have a fair amount of style with its
impressive use of shadows, black & white photography and an interesting soundtrack, it's more a political parable than a standard horror movie, with an obvious underlying theme of sexual
equality and women 'taking back the night'. Â
A
brave film, but the pacing of the crawling, languid narrative serves to eke out the running time when the subject material would have worked much better as a short film.
6/10