Vampires have always been sexy. Even before Edward Cullen sparkled his way into every teenage girl’s heart, Dark Shadows’ Barnabas Collins collected a lot of fan mail. Kiefer Sutherland’s David in The Lost Boys is the stuff of bad boy fantasies, and there’s no denying Bela Lugosi’s enticing performance as Dracula all the way back in 1931. But even though vampires have seemingly always been cinema’s most crush-worthy monster, the portrayals of their lives have become far more complex than just that of a charismatic creature with a deadly taste for blood. In recent years, we’ve gotten films that attempt to take a more nuanced look at the psychological ramifications of what it might mean to actually be a vampire. Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) showed the existential ennui that undoubtedly creeps up on you if you, you know, live forever, and 2008’s Let the Right One In allowed us to sympathize with a bloodthirsty killer child. Even the aforementioned Twilight franchise explores the ethical complexities of needing to feed on the blood of other humans in order to survive.
Ariane Louis-Seize’s addition to this horror subgenre, then, is nothing new. Her latest film, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, sets up the familiar premise of ethically-conscious vampire trying to live out eternity by doing the least amount of harm. However, the movie is equal parts charming and funny, which makes for a delightfully heartwarming and enjoyable time. Sasha (Sara Monpetit) is a teenage vampire who has yet to partake in her first kill. Unlike the rest of her family (and other vampires), she does not experience the primal urge to kill, experiencing compassion for her would be victims, instead. Her mother keeps her alive by hunting for the entire family, and Sasha sips on refrigerated blood bags with the fervor of a toddler sucking down juice boxes. But eventually, her parents have had enough, forcing her out on her own sans help in the hopes that her hunger will eventually overpower her unusual code of ethics.
Eventually, she crosses paths with Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a suicidal high schooler who is more than happy to offer himself up to Sasha as her first independent meal in exchange for getting to check out early. But naturally, movie stuff happens, and this plan ends up becoming more complicated than it seems.
What makes Humanist Vampire so fun is its characters. Both Sasha and Paul are delightfully awkward and loveable, playing off one another like the perfect unlikely couple featured in everyone’s high school yearbook. The film’s humor is also on point, remaining dry and self-aware to the very end, and the plot’s central dilemma—will Sasha ever succeed at becoming self-sufficient in a way that doesn’t compromise her values?—provides the perfect amount of urgency and tension to keep audiences invested. There is also an intriguing undercurrent surrounding the ethics of choice when it comes to death, and whether or not the film meant to provide subtle commentary on the topic of assisted suicide, it’s impossible to walk away from the film without giving it at least a small amount of thought. Even so, perhaps one of the film’s biggest flaws is that Humanist Vampire doesn’t push that thought far enough, stopping just shy of making any revelatory statements on the topic. The same thing can be said about the film’s gore levels which are decidedly low for a movie focused on a pretty blood-heavy topic. Though more violence may have given the movie a bit of added spice, it would most likely have completely changed the tone, which perfectly lands smack dab in the middle of lighthearted and charming.
Ultimately, Humanist Vampire isn’t going to change the vampire genre by shocking film nerds with a new hot take on cinema’s most lust-worthy monsters, but there’s no doubt that the movie will tug at your heart strings. It’s an interesting premise shepherded by a talented cast that is sure to live on for some time.
Photo courtesy of Drafthouse Films
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