Discussion: Revisionist Vampire Cinema

​As the spooky season is upon us, we decided to look at vampire films through a different lens with The Vourdalak by Adrien Beau and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour. Both films break away from conventional vampire tropes, contrasting raw, ancient roots of gothic folklore with sensibilities covered in modern independent cinema. One plunges back into pre-Stoker agrarian dread and marionette-style uncanny horror to examine insular family structures, while the other uses monochrome neo-noir and post-punk flair to transform the night into a space of vigilante agency.

The Vourdalak by Adrien Beau (France, 2023): Shot on grain-heavy 16mm film, this eerie French adaptation of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s 19th-century novella strips away modern romanticism to return to the primal, Slavic folk origins of the vampire. When a French diplomat finds refuge with a strange family in a remote forest, he finds them terrified of their patriarch, who has returned from battle transformed into a bloodthirsty beast. Utilizing haunting practical effects and an unearthly puppet for its monster, Beau crafts an unsettling, claustrophobic tale about toxic patriarchal control, inescapable bloodlines, and the grim reality of ancient superstition. - Can be rented on YouTube or Prime Video.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour (USA, 2014): A "vampire western" that flips street harassment on its head in a fictional, desolate town called Bad City. Wrapped in a chador that billows like a cape, a lonely skateboarding vampire silently stalks the night, targeting predatory men while forging a quiet, unexpected connection with a young man carrying his own burdens. Amirpour delivers a brooding and atmospheric subversion of horror that reclaims nocturnal fear as a site of modern empowerment. - Available on Prime Video.

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