Walking My Vampire Back Home

We went into A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) with exactly this much information: Iranian vampire movie. 

It is filmed in black and white, usually at night, in a rundown Iranian town called Bad City. A rather cool young man, Arash Marandi, is looking after his heroin addicted father (who also likes to gamble and visit prostitutes). His pimp and pusher, Dominic Rains, shows up to demand payment, and takes Arash's Mustang convertible. 

Later, the pimp (who looks like an Ali G. character) is on his way home from roughing up a prostitute (Mozhan Mamo). He sees a woman in a chador on a dark street, and she silently follows him to his place. There, as he is trying to seduce him, she bites his finger off, kills him and drinks his blood. We also see her menace a little boy, but not kill him. She does take his skateboard.

Arash shows up to try to get his car back, sees the body, but mostly sees a brief case full of money and drugs, which he leaves with. He quits his job as gardener and starts dealing. He tries to hang out with some rich girls, and one of them pressures him into doing E with them - then blow him off when he tries to get romantic. (One of the other girls is the director, Ana Lily Amirpour. Look for the skeleton costume.)

The girl in the chador is skateboarding down a deserted street when she runs into a heavily tripping Arash, staring at a streetlight. They share a moment, and she tries to take him home, but he can't quite walk. So she loads him onto the board and off they go.

At her place, she puts a record on and they stand together - slowly, slowly, he reaches out to touch her, and they finally kiss. 

But can a poor but somewhat dishonest son of an addict find happiness with a girl vampire? Well, probably not - happiness is hard to find in Bad City. But maybe something.

This is a great movie. It's a very personal movie for Amirpour, who is Iranian, and has a very indie look, but was actually made in California, with lots of Americans behind the camera. I suppose this makes sense, because I doubt this will play in Iran any time soon. Also, very surreal and has a great soundtrack.