The new film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is certainly a curios thing. It’s an American/Iranian black and white vampire romance (in Farsi subtitled in English) set in a dying industrial city in maybe-Iran? Maybe not? The city is simply named “Bad City”. It was filmed in the US by an Iranian-American first time film maker (Ana Lily Amirpour) and it’s a complete mash of genres… horror, romance, western, and I don’t know what else. I’d call it a bit of an experimental, definitely art-house, film that’s set somewhere between slow burn and WTF weirdness. Definitely not for everyone but I kind of enjoyed its oddness. And the scene of the Iranian vampire girl dressed in a hijab and robe (not really a burka, I guess) riding a skateboard at night, her robes flowing in the wind for all the world like Dracula’s cape. Intentional. Idiosyncratic. Fascinating.

Oh, the plot… ummm… a dude dressed like a 50’s greaser meets a vampire lass dressed part in traditional muslim garb and part like a French new-wave movie star meet… he’s got problems like a junkie father and a cat, she’s got problems like finding bums to drink and listening to Iranian pop music… can these two crazy kids find love in this dead end, industrial desert oil town? Or maybe it’s about more than that. Or less. I dunno.

It’s available now for rental on iTunes and (according to their website) rolling out slowly across the country in no doubt art house cinemas.

Score: 83