Scooter Briody  

The American-produced Iranian-led independent film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night focuses on the inhabitants of the fictional Bad City, a town as desolate as its name implies. Arash, an idealistic young man taking care of his heroin-addicted father, meets a vampire girl stalking the streets of the city. The Girl spends her time killing men who disrespect women, but she hesitates in killing Arash, who resists her jaded image of men. The relationship between the two challenges themes of gender and predatory romance.  

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night uses black and white to symbolize the bleak lives of the characters onscreen. The lack of color and deep shadows of the streets make it all the easier for The Girl to blend into the darkness and stalk her prey. In one scene, suspense is ramped up as she keeps pace with Arash’s frightened father from across an empty street, toying with him until he runs terrified into the night. The Girl’s vampirism gives her the advantage of walking the streets without fear and getting the upper hand on men who might otherwise take advantage of her, but it’s not without a price. Throughout the film we are reminded of the looming pit of bodies outside town, which we can assume is full of her past victims.   

One of the film’s most common symbols is the cat Arash takes home at the beginning—cats can symbolize a number of things, similar to how vampires can also take on a number of symbolic meanings depending on context. The figure of The Girl riding a skateboard in her chador also shows this polysemy, contrasting traditional wear with youth culture while also recalling the silhouette of original black-and-white film vampires like Nosferatu. The Girl has a clear desire to break misogynist stereotypes using her vampirism, but at the same time her thirst for blood forces her into certain behaviors against her will. We see this in the moment she hesitates to drink from Arash: she is wary both of trusting a man, and of loving someone when she knows she’s in danger of killing them. In this way, their power imbalance challenges the balance of typical onscreen heterosexual relationships. 

The film ends ambiguously with the romantic leads driving off silently together, Arash still unaware The Girl is a vampire but suspecting her in the death of his father. They have finally escaped from Bad City, but at the cost of any remaining trust they had for each other. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night provides a unique take on the vampire romance, something hard to do in a genre so overdone. Instead of focusing on melodrama between a mortal and an immortal, the film instead gives us quiet moments of suspense, leaving us to wonder if the two can still love each other after what’s happened. 

A Girls Walks Home Alone at Night (NR) dir. Ana Lilly Amirpour (2014