‘Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’ Review: Teen Horror So Cute It’s (Not Even) Scary August 31, 2023. Also at the Toronto Film Festival. Running time: 92 minutes. (Original title: “Vampire Humaniste Cherche Suicidaire Consentant”) Most Popular Must Reads Sign up for a variety of newsletters from more of our brands

The ageless vampire tale gets one of its most frequent cinematic revivals with Québécois director Ariane Louis-Céez’s lovely Gothic Venice Days winner (three more at this Venice Film Festival alone: ​​”El Conde,” “En attendant la Nuit” and “The Warlock”). , a film that is humorously – if very broadly – ​​described by its title: “Humanitarian vampire seeks out consensual suicide man.” The idea of ​​a vampire who doesn’t want to kill is hardly without precedent. But Lewis-Seize’s curious debut, intentionally or otherwise, plays to a relatively vampire-hungry demographic, offering continuity to kids who have long outgrown the “Sesame Street” version, but still love “Twilight.” Still a bit young for emo lust. Franchise. It’s more of a fairy tale than a horror story.

However, it is a fine display of the charismatic charisma of star Sarah Montpetit, who, after playing the doomed object of her first crush in Charlotte Le Bon’s brilliant “Falcon Lake,” is bent on cornering the depressed Francophone teen market. Entry into adulthood in which sex and death are intertwined. Only here Sasha, a 62-year-old vampire posing as a teenage girl, is not only death-obsessed but not actually dead, and it is implied, from birth.

Sasha has always been different from her blood-sucking relatives. On her birthday, little Sasha (Lilas-Rose Cantin) is being entertained by a party clown, but when it becomes clear that the man in the wig and red nose is there for both the dinner and the show, she starts screaming. Looks like. After a few years, Sasha (Montpetit) has never developed fangs and survives on the generosity of her loving father (Steve LaPlante) and less indulgent mother (Sophie Cadieux). They fill the fridge with bags of blood from their murders, which Sara sucks up like a capri-sun.

At night she wanders around Montreal, which is a kind of Buffyverse here, where ordinary people are apparently unaware of the danger they face, but aren’t too surprised when they encounter it. In one of these nocturnal reccees, she sees Paul (Felix-Antoine Bénard) sitting on the roof of the bowling alley where he works, and thinking about jumping. Paul is a troubled, sensitive high-schooler whose loving but distracted mother is unaware that he is the target of daily bullying. And although, this night, he decides to come down from the roof, he feels as if someone is postponing rather than cancelling. Sasha is curious. The next time she sees him, he sees her too, and is so shocked that he crashes into the wall, drawing blood. Sasha feels his sharp teeth breaking her gums and she runs away.

Upon discovering that she is now ready to commit suicide, her parents cut off the blood supply to her, sending Sasha to live with her cousin Denise (Noemi O’Farrell), who That he was red-haired and who cared about murder as much as Sasha cared about killing. But the relationship Sasha and Paul have built suggests a different, more mutually desirable path – if only emotions don’t get in the way. When Sasha offers willing victim Paul a reprieve from the previous night so they can spend time together seeking revenge for all the wrongs he’s done against her, it’s clear she’s looking for a way to put the work off. Because she likes him.

Louis-Sies’s eye for style and Shawn Pawlin’s darkly flavored cinematography give “Humanist Vampire” a graphic-novel coolness, especially in the tightly framed two-shots or the heroic stances in which Sasha is captured, Stacked on top of shipping containers with their bolts. The silky hair is wagging at the ends like the tail of an irritated cat. But it’s also a bit of a waste of how Lewis-Sys and co-writer Christine Doyon’s scheming screenplay takes a myth as simple as the vampire legend and honestly, piously unpacks it, introducing a bit of gore and a romance. Which is mostly limited to burning glances and hesitant hands. -Catch.

This does not mean that there is no ethical dilemma here. There’s this strangely absolutist idea that because the first person Sasha actually kills is a bad person, the moral injunction against killing her is lifted. And the notion of consent in suicide has also not been closely examined: there is no discussion of whether depressed mental states might make such “consent” questionable, let alone all those potential suicides. Those who should be helped. A more convenient way of jumping was shown.

But the “humanistic vampire” doesn’t want us to think too deeply, and his goal is primarily charm. To a large extent it succeeds, which is its own kind of criticism in this post-“Titan” and -“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” era, when some audiences may expect provocation or offense from their horror idols. “Humanist Vampire” is bad news for them, but as a good-natured, dark, teen-rom-com dressed in stylish Halloween costumes, it’s good news for “Wednesday” fans and anyone else who loves Nosferatu. Want to be more aawww than aaargh.