A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Replacing the traditional vampire cloak with a chador, The Girl roams the nighttime streets of Bad City with a skateboard, preying on noxious men while taking vengeance on hooligans who abuse women. When her path crosses with a James Dean-styled boy who is burdened by his addict father, fate reverses their fortunes as an unlikely romance struggles to emerge. Beguiling in its strangeness and cool monochromatic imagery, Ana Lily Amirpour’s atmospheric directorial debut infuses the vampire genre with elements of Lynchian neo-noir and spaghetti Western, spicing it up with romantic isolation and a metaphorical attack on patriarchy and chauvinism.