Spook Out! Day 12 ~ A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (in Farsi w/English subtitles, 2014)

Amazon Says...
"Strange things are afoot in Bad City. The Iranian ghost town, home to prostitutes, junkies, pimps, and other sordid souls, is a place that reeks of death and hopelessness, where a lonely vampire is stalking the towns' [sic] most unsavory inhabitants. But when boy meets girl, an unusual love story begins to blossom...blood red."

I Say...
A) You've said too much, Amazon, B) That's an impressive run-on sentence, and C) You need to work on your apostrophe placement...

Horror Type...
Vampire, Thriller, Drama

Main Players...

Sheila Vand as The Girl (The Vampiest Vamp Who Ever Vamped)

Arash Marandi as Arash (The Persian Fonz)

Masuka The Cat as The Cat (Meow)

I liked...

• the cinematography. Shot in gorgeously noir black and white, the setting, the framing, the lighting, the angles--GAH, the EVERYTHING makes this film a luxurious feast for the eyes
• The Girl. So menacingly stylish, so effortlessly compelling--I've never found an antihero as morosely, forbiddingly sexy as this gal! (WTF is not to love about a skateboarding vampire???)
• Arash, her lovably goofy, yet sincere love interest. He's got his flaws (more on those in the next section) but he's still the heart and soul of this movie
• the hilarious scene in which The Girl comes upon a very high Arash, who's lost and staring up at a street lamp. How she gets him moving is adorbz!
• how it explores our connections to others: how we're drawn and repulsed, how we make and break them, how we endure and how we fail. As in life, the "whys" sometimes remain mysteries...
• how the director uses the stereotypical attributes of females/female victims--silence, stillness, downcast eyes--to render the Girl utterly terrifying
• how The Cat ratchets the tension up in pretty much every scene featuring him
• the soundtrack which (forgive me) really rocks my kasbah
• how the movie really takes its time...

The Meh...

• ...although it does take a little too long here and there, and its hypnotic hold really start to work on you. Shaving off a few minutes would've alleviated the soporific effect
• Arash, whom I love, is concerningly impetuous and rash. This is due to his youth, no doubt, but some of his actions do bother me
• I'm left with a ton of questions! (As I noted earlier, the "whys" remain mysteries.) The biggest one arises toward the end, when Arash fails to confront The Girl about a very suspicious, and serious, coincidence--it's clear that he's bothered by it but, apart from a bit of a quiet fit, he doesn't address it directly. Say what, Arash? I know you've got the warm and fuzzies for her, but still! I would do anything for love, but I--well, you know...

Would I recommend it...?

Heck yes! This is a fabulous film full of girl-powah! It's more of a drama/thriller than horror, though--no jump scares and I don't remember any gore, really. There's one disturbing scene about forced drug use but it's not, IMO, exploitive. It's more creepy than scary (that noted, if The Girl had interrogated me the way she did a street urchin in the film, I'd have definitely soiled myself).

Miscellany...

• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has been described in various places as an Iranian vampire spaghetti-western--and it totally is. However, it was shot, not in Iran, but in California
• the film's writer/director, Ana Lily Amirpour, has a cameo as "Skeleton Partygirl," and doubles for The Girl in some of the skateboarding shots
• the bones of the movie came to Amirpour when she tried on a chador, like The Girl wears in the movie (not a hijab, as some reviewers have asserted)
• this was a re-watch for me. I'm ding-dang-donged if I can recall when I first watched this, but it was long enough ago that I forgot all the particulars--though I never forgot how much I heart this film

Ratings...

My Grade: A- as a drama/thriller, B as a horror movie

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: Tomatometer=96%, Audience Score=75%

Details, Schmeetails...

I Watched A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on Amazon (the Rotten Tomatoes page linked above provides links to other streaming platforms)

Check it out on IMDb

Learn more about it on Wikipedia (Contains Spoilers)

This concludes Day 12 of

Thanks for reading and come back tomorrow...

IF YOU DARE