Entry #9: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout, I'm telling you why. There's a vampire at the center of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night simply called The Girl (Sheila Vand) who stalks and devours cruel men in her local community. These guys have usually done something of the most wicked variety to earn their fate as a snack for this person who puts on the appearance of just being your average woman. At the same time, Arash (Arash Marandi) is having his own struggles stemming from his father's troubles with addiction. His own life is so filled with problems, maybe a bit of romance will help him forget his woes? As luck would have it, he finds himself enamored with The Girl, not realizing she's a bloodthirsty vampire. Ah, the trials and tribulations of romance.
In the five years since its initial release, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has garnered widespread acclaim that's launched both the film and its director Ana Lily Amirpour into stardom. I can't say I was as bowled over by it as its most ardent fans but that's mostly on a personal preference basis rather than some complaint on this film being inherently subpar. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is one of those slower-paced horror features that sometimes work like gangbusters for me and other times leave me at such an arm's length that they leave me a touch cold. Even if it's pacing wasn't always captivating, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night still have plenty of qualities to it that still make it a noteworthy horror film.
Most notably, the way Ana Lily Amirpour keeps undercutting visual expectations throughout A Girl Walks Home at Night is most intriguing. This stems as an extension of The Girl and how she is not what she appears to be. Walking through the streets of Iran wearing a shash and garbasaar, Amirpour is aware that characters dressed in this manner like The Girl are traditionally coded in male-created cinema narratives as being passive figures, whereas The Girl is somebody who can devour dudes in no time flat. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how A Girl Walks Home at Night frequently takes standard pop culture assumptions and then running in the total opposite direction.
A tender scene of Arash going back to The Girl's house for the first time is an especially good example of this as the way the scene is shot, paced and scored echoes classic 1980's teen romance movies, complete with a glistening disco ball providing fragmented glittery lighting. The only difference here is that the fact that The Girl is a vampire lends a ticking clock factor to the sequence, you're just waiting for the moment where the fangs will pop out and this whole scene will go from Sixteen Candles to Nosferatu! The lead character of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is not what she seems and subversion is also on the mind of the film itself in this sequence and throughout the rest of the movie.
Sheila Vand is really good at fiddling around with viewers expectations too, you never quite know when the monstrous side of The Girl is going to come out of the blue and star chowing down on characters in a scene. This part of the performance is so well-done because Vand is so skilled at portraying The Girl as just a person, she doesn't tackle this role as a one-dimensional monsters. She's especially attune to the down-to-Earth qualities of the role when she's tasked with depicting the character in a more conflicted state in the third act, that you can easily (and intentionally) forget you're watching someone whose also a vampire until those fangs come on out again.
That engaging level of uncertainty over when The Girl's more vicious side will crop up is aided by the films sense of pacing, which really bides its time in building up to whenever vampire mayhem breaks out. Sometimes this pacing left me cold, sure, but more often than not it did effectively keep me on my toes as to what moves The Girl would make next. Generating tension on a visual level is the best part of Ana Lily Amirpour's directing in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a movie whose best qualities make it clear why this motion picture managed to catapult its creative participants fame and acclaim.
In the five years since its initial release, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has garnered widespread acclaim that's launched both the film and its director Ana Lily Amirpour into stardom. I can't say I was as bowled over by it as its most ardent fans but that's mostly on a personal preference basis rather than some complaint on this film being inherently subpar. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is one of those slower-paced horror features that sometimes work like gangbusters for me and other times leave me at such an arm's length that they leave me a touch cold. Even if it's pacing wasn't always captivating, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night still have plenty of qualities to it that still make it a noteworthy horror film.
Most notably, the way Ana Lily Amirpour keeps undercutting visual expectations throughout A Girl Walks Home at Night is most intriguing. This stems as an extension of The Girl and how she is not what she appears to be. Walking through the streets of Iran wearing a shash and garbasaar, Amirpour is aware that characters dressed in this manner like The Girl are traditionally coded in male-created cinema narratives as being passive figures, whereas The Girl is somebody who can devour dudes in no time flat. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how A Girl Walks Home at Night frequently takes standard pop culture assumptions and then running in the total opposite direction.
A tender scene of Arash going back to The Girl's house for the first time is an especially good example of this as the way the scene is shot, paced and scored echoes classic 1980's teen romance movies, complete with a glistening disco ball providing fragmented glittery lighting. The only difference here is that the fact that The Girl is a vampire lends a ticking clock factor to the sequence, you're just waiting for the moment where the fangs will pop out and this whole scene will go from Sixteen Candles to Nosferatu! The lead character of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is not what she seems and subversion is also on the mind of the film itself in this sequence and throughout the rest of the movie.
Sheila Vand is really good at fiddling around with viewers expectations too, you never quite know when the monstrous side of The Girl is going to come out of the blue and star chowing down on characters in a scene. This part of the performance is so well-done because Vand is so skilled at portraying The Girl as just a person, she doesn't tackle this role as a one-dimensional monsters. She's especially attune to the down-to-Earth qualities of the role when she's tasked with depicting the character in a more conflicted state in the third act, that you can easily (and intentionally) forget you're watching someone whose also a vampire until those fangs come on out again.
That engaging level of uncertainty over when The Girl's more vicious side will crop up is aided by the films sense of pacing, which really bides its time in building up to whenever vampire mayhem breaks out. Sometimes this pacing left me cold, sure, but more often than not it did effectively keep me on my toes as to what moves The Girl would make next. Generating tension on a visual level is the best part of Ana Lily Amirpour's directing in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a movie whose best qualities make it clear why this motion picture managed to catapult its creative participants fame and acclaim.
