A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (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'.

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