{"id":6675,"date":"2024-10-23T13:03:04","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6675"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:03:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:03:04","slug":"a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/23\/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night\/","title":{"rendered":"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> (2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kino Lorber\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (violence, horror, drug abuse, adult themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ana Lily Amirpour\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ana Lily Amirpour\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Federale, Radio Tehran, Bei Ru, Farah, White Lies, Kiosk, Free Electric Band and Dariush\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lyle Vincent\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 27, 2015 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marno, Dominic Rains, Rome Shadanloo, Milad Eghbali, Reza Sixo Safai.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spoken in Persian w\/English subtitles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can honestly say that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> is the best vampire movie I\u2019ve seen since Jim Jarmusch\u2019s Only Lovers Left Alive last year. Interesting since the eccentric filmmaker appears to be one of debut filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour\u2019s primary influences.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Filmed in stark, gorgeous black and white, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> creeps up on you and gets under your skin without you realizing it. The chilling tale of a solitary female vampire (Vand) is set in a (fictional) desolate Iranian ghost town called \u201cBad City\u201d, a sprawling hellhole punctuated by pumping oil drills and a ditch filled with corpses. The movie was actually shot in the California desert, a brilliant decision on the part of the first-time writer-director because of how strongly it evokes the feeling of isolation. The common thread among the characters is the heavy feeling of loneliness they carry with them. The physical landscape perfectly reflects the emotional landscapes of the characters. It\u2019s a very static film, many times the images and characters don\u2019t move for long periods of time. It\u2019s this very stasis that creates the underlying tension prevalent in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong>. It\u2019s important not to confuse this with slow-moving and boring because this film is anything but. On the contrary, it plays like a nightmare in which the events appear to have neither rhyme nor reason, only making sense on an abstract level.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The main character in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> appears to Arash (Marandi), a young James Dean-type rebel who drives a vintage car and takes care of his heroin-addicted father (Manesh). Dad is in debt up to his eyeballs to local pusher\/pimp Saeed (Rains) who ultimately takes Arash\u2019s car as payment. One night, Saeed encounters \u201cThe Girl\u201d, a beautiful young woman who quietly wanders the nighttime streets of Bad City clad in a French striped sailor T-shirt and black chador. He takes her back to his place where she makes quick work of the unsuspecting dude.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although Arash encounters her briefly as she leaves the building, the two don\u2019t get together until later. After an unsuccessful attempt to hook up with a rich girl (Shadanloo) at a club, a stoned Arash leaves the party and wanders the empty streets dressed as Dracula. It\u2019s the costume that attracts the vampire\u2019s attention. She does a double-take when she spots him staring at a street light. It\u2019s as close to a meet-cute as the film gets. They get together a couple of times, never wasting much time on needless conversation, their mutual attraction already understood. They share a longing as deep as any ocean.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition to early Jarmusch, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night <\/strong>also shows influences of David Lynch (Eraserhead in particular), spaghetti westerns, the 90s grunge scene and teen rom-coms. Amirpour\u2019s visual style is, at once, beautiful and hypnotic with the high contrast between black and white and the way light spills into various scenes, cutting through the blackness. It\u2019s filled with unforgettable imagery too, like \u201cThe Girl\u201d gliding down the dark streets on a skateboard, chador and veil flowing behind her. It\u2019s meant to represent freedom, something women in Middle Eastern countries don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So it is that the underlying idea of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> is female empowerment through vampirism. In one scene, she confronts a young street kid in a ragged coat and ominously whispers a warning to \u201cbe a good boy\u201d or else. It conveys its message in a manner more poetic than any monologue in one of your more politically or socially conscious serious films.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is top-notch, especially where the two leads- Vand and Marandi- are concerned. Their scenes together positively shiver with a deep and acute romanticism. They don\u2019t need to say anything at all. Vand radiates both sexuality and danger as she stands motionless across streets and vacant lots, staring at potential victims. Nobody understands what she truly is until it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like Jarmusch, Amirpour uses music to great effect. The soundtrack includes a few great Iranian pop songs. Note for note, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night<\/strong> is total perfection. Twi-hards, take note! This is a vampire movie done right. Like Only Lovers Left Alive and 2008\u2019s Let the Right One In, it infuses the anemic vampire genre with fresh blood. It\u2019s a total rush!<\/p>\n

SPECIAL NOTE: For all you animal lovers, the cat seen in the movie does not die or get killed. It lives to see the end.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kino Lorber\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (violence, horror, drug abuse, adult themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ana Lily Amirpour\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ana Lily Amirpour\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Federale, Radio Tehran, Bei Ru, Farah, White Lies, Kiosk, Free Electric Band and Dariush\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lyle Vincent\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 27, 2015 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/A-Girl-Walks-Home-Alone-at-.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6675"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6809,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions\/6809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}