Tag: vampires

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night dir. Ana Lily Amirpour (2014) Marketed as the first Iranian vampire western. This latter aspect sits hazy in the background but the sense of (noir-ish, feminist) vampirism permeates, starkly enhanced through black-and-white cinematography and an astute substitution of silence for traditional scoring cues. Quality cast. Award-worthy cat!

Carmilla

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (The Dark Blue, 1871-1872) A very early vampire novella, constrained by attitudes of the time yet nonetheless pursuing a lesbian angle and affording an uncommon measure of female empowerment. Le Fanu for the most part hints subtly at the supernatural, but resorts at last to exposition.

Priest

Priest dir. Scott Stewart (2011) In a pseudo-futuristic dystopia, an excommunicated warrior priest confronts inner demons and a newly spawned vampire threat. The premise may not inspire but the plot at least hasn’t been twisted to throttle itself, allowing moody quiet moments to mollify the over-the-top action.  

42 Word Retrospective: The Last Vampire by Willis Hall

The Last Vampire by Willis Hall (The Bodley Head, 1982) A quintessentially middle-class English family encounters the last (vegetarian) vampire in this YA comedy of happenstance and misunderstanding. By fleshing out every character — even the wolves! — Willis Hall both draws attention to, and disabuses his readers of, the vampire tropes of legend.