This Fear's Got A Hold of Me

In her essay on A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,  Elle Haywood  explores how Ana Lily Amirpour's use of iconic horror imagery project moments of feminist liberation.

Note: This article includes spoilers

Iranian Vampire film and Western hit A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is an immersive, fever-dream that hinges upon the story of a vampire huntress. The Girl (Sheila Vand) lives in Bad City, a desolate town of the forlorn, and disillusioned youths. Flittering down the road on a skateboard with her chador carried on the wind, she preys upon men who disrespect women and stalks others in the night. This feminist tale explores gender expectations, tormented souls, and the sensuality of darkness. The contrasting cinematography of bright streetlamps and shadow-soaked alleys possess a myriad of secrets, with the booming tones of indie-rock carrying the pace. Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature harnesses elements of the Iranian New Wave, from the late 1960s and 1970s, a movement that elevated the cultural status of Iranian cinema, introducing more stories that focus on female agency. Her work is a modern-day reflection on how Persian films explored the emptiness of urban landscape. It’s stylistically innovative, and simultaneously exposes and destroys the male gaze. 

The narrative is a refined modern take on the blood-sucking depiction of the vampire, and with cinematic nods to classic Hollywood’s seamless editing. The Girl, moving silently around the city, observes the whereabouts of her prey and how they treat people. Arash (Arash Marandi), a young man who works tirelessly to support his heroin-addicted father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh), is forced to work under drug-dealer and pimp Saeed (Dominic Rains). Saeed encounters The Girl, and she entrances him into taking her back to his apartment, unaware that she has been watching his drug-runs and witnessed him taking advantage of sex workers. When he gets closer to The Girl, her fangs emerge and she takes his finger into her mouth, chewing it off and smearing the blood as if lipstick before going in for the kill. We understand from this moment on, this is not a vampire enacting thoughtless killings; she is meticulous and carefully selects her victims, demonstrating power and ruthlessness. As the story continues, there are similar encounters that bring The Girl and Arash together, like a winding thread, as both engage in their own scrupulous criminal activity, all the while contemplating if this makes them bad people, too. The film shows how many are forced into desperation, questioning who the real victims are. At the very least, we are emotionally aligned with this cloaked heroine, who embodies a monstrous creature that comes in the night, but with the goal to liberate women from their patriarchal chokeholds. 

Early depictions of the vampire as featured in Bram Stocker’s novel, Dracula (1897) are based on Vlad the Impaler, a cruel dictator from the Ottoman Empire who relished in murdering his enemies and, supposedly, feasting on their blood. The description of him very much centres around the thrill he derives in killing others for consumptive pleasure, whereas The Girl’s attacks in Amirpour’s film are tactical and vengeful. What’s unique about this film is how Amirpour uses traditional horror elements to subvert the idea that the vampire is the villain. She is, instead, framed as the hero, enacting  revenge on men who take pleasure in subjugating women, to reveal the real horror in this world: it is not supernatural, but lies within the patriarchal domination of society. Amirpour’s nameless female vampire is positioned as both a saviour and murderer, as she reflects on life and death. She converses with Arash, weighing up their relationship, on account of her being ‘bad’, leading him to reveal his equally jaded past, and that it comes from desperation rather than a desire to kill. From one perspective, she is seen as the villain; in the film’s opening credit sequence, we see a pile up of bodies, and it is not until later that we understand this work may be her doing, as well as it serving as Arash’s dumping ground. Yet we may also view this in terms of her avenging women who have died directly and indirectly at the hands of men; through sexual assault, manipulation, rape, and addiction. This adds layers to her role as heroine, with a cloak of complexity shrouding her in mystery, but with the lingering idea that she uses her immortality for good. This duality roots her role in the film; taking an active stance against male oppression via her bloodthirsty natural tendencies as a vampire. 

In Iran, it is common for many women to wear a chador out of choice, as it isn’t mandatory. There’s empowerment in her choice of clothing, from the chador floating on the wind as she rides the skateboard through the desolate streets, to soaking naked in the bathtub in contemplation. But the use of the chador within the film is also elegant in its design as it reflects the look of a traditional vampire, but with a feminist twist. The design of vampires usually includes a cloak or cape that encircles them in the moments when they wish to vanish to dust or transform into a bat. It was first made popular in the 1927 Broadway Show of Dracula, which was carried into the film version. For The Girl, it allows her to be enigmatic and liberated; it is her choice of when and what she wears. Shades of black clothing are staples of darker or more gothic themes, visually expressing an energy that may go deeper or be more profound. Traditional artistic portrayals of vampires have leant towards masculine design, as in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), two iconic depictions of the blood-sucking creatures. This traditional imagery of the dusty, aged vampire is entirely swept away in Amirpour’s construction of The Girl, replaced by a young, female protagonist with a chador as a cloak, as a contemporary supernatural icon. 

The rise of vampire sexualisation peaked in the 1970s, with Jean Rollin’s third vampire film The Shiver of the Vampires (Le Frisson des Vampires, 1971). It has a gothic aesthetic, yet is filled with nudity and plays with the vulnerability of virginity. This idea of pleasure and sensuality also marks Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (Las Vampiras, 1971), a Spanish-German erotic lesbian vampire story with elements of psychedelia. It introduced the idea of a female vampire seducing her prey, before biting them; The Girl’s method of killing.. In A Girl, the construction of subjected desire and male gaze are obliterated and subverted through a feminist lens. Building on Laura Mulvey’s seminal text Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) is Silvia Bovenschen and Beth Weckmueller’s questioning, Is There a Feminine Aesthetic? (1977). In it, feminist literary critic Bovenschen takes Mulvey’s apparatus theory into the text, so that when male characters gaze at women within a film, she becomes objectified, which is then passed onto the spectator as a male lens where they will also see her as objectified. Amirpour’s inversion of this is in changing the audience POV. When a male character walks past or approaches The Girl, we observe her from just behind the man or boy’s shoulder; we are not placed in his eye line, but observe the interaction at a slight distance, where we can determine his internal objectification, but with the added satisfaction of knowing she will take his life. This breaks the male gaze, and blocks the process enabling the viewer to assume it through a feminist framing of the vampire enacting her revenge. She knows that she won’t be objectified or taken advantage of, owing to her supernatural powers, but also knows that other women do not possess this same advantage, and so she does it for them and their liberation.  

The way that Amirpour positions women in the story shows them in their work and social roles in society, which presents the autonomy of choice, but still they find themselves having to confront male hierarchies. Saeed plays a vital role in Bad City’s drug ring, which also includes the ownership of sex workers like Atti (Mozhan Marnò). Atti is central to the story as she spends many nights walking home alone, and the first time she notices The Girl is after keying Saeed’s car, her own personal act of spite against him. She stands up to the vampire, unapologetic about her vandalism, but also very nervous about being followed in the dark by this cloaked woman. This is a typical universal fear of movement in the shadows; however, she finds an ally in The Girl. Sat, talking together, they enter a dialogue where Atti explains the work she does is out of necessity, but she has choices. The Girl makes it clear this does not wash with her, and acknowledges that, really, Atti is saving up to escape. She paints a picture of the suffocating claustrophobia in being stuck in a cycle where men dictate her personal and sexual freedom. The picture of horror, in this instance, is not visual but atmospheric. To prevent the story from just being about killing abusive men, The Girl also uses her skills as a way of educating, and challenging stereotypes of women being ‘soft’ when teaching children a lesson. She follows a young boy out alone at night, continuing her pattern of stalking. In confronting him, she asks if he has been a ‘good boy’ and after whimpering yes, she snarls and leans her fangs closer into his face, telling him not to lie. The boy’s fear may have stemmed from Persian stories about blood-drinking demons, which first appeared in the ancient region of Mesopotamia, which includes Iran, where images of men are seen being killed by vampire-like monsters on broken pottery. His fear of a monster is very much universal; most of us would be terrified at being confronted by a vampire. She allows him to live but warns him that she will find him if ever he misbehaves, an attempt to warn a new generation that their unethical treatment of women will have consequences. This demonic framing around a feminist issue is chilling, as it involves the life of a child in her hands, and the way she chooses to deal with the matter is both sparing and moving. She is again, by choice, presenting herself as a female role model, giving respect to women, in a town where men’s and women’s rights are severely unbalanced. 

Imagery of the shadows through nightscape scenery connotes a fear of the unknown in what we can’t visually identify, and the lit space is used to assist in the visibility of presence. The Girl’s facial features are illuminated when she is floating through the streets alone or approaching an individual; she rises from the tunnels into the literal light, asking us to reconsider our perception of her. She owns this space, where she commits acts of revenge but where she also walks freely and safely. In a scene where she stalks Arash’s father, Hossein, he notices her presence as they face each other; The Girl mimics the way he walks, almost panther-like, and it is immediately evident that he has never been challenged like this by a woman, with the gripping fear of the darkness exaggerating their unusual encounter, roles reversed. The connection of their eyes is a way to force the Other to acknowledge her presence, re-positioning them on her level. The lighting also changes when she’s in her room, as she lines her eyes with dark kohl and applies shades of red to her lips; her make-up painted on for her pleasure only. This, again, is Amirpour reminding the audience of the vampire’s autonomy. However, we must also acknowledge how The Girl’s beautifying routine is not intended as visual pleasure for men but plays upon expectations of women giving themselves to men as a ploy to lure them into (honey)traps. Female killers are in the minority in horror films, usually emerging from incidents of men betraying or abandoning them in adult life. While we are not made aware of the Girl’s personal vendettas, we understand her purpose is to hunt men who deliberately attack, manipulate and take advantage of women. 

The way this imagery blends with the indie-rock soundtrack is inherently feminist as it plays out when The Girl is in the safe space of her room, the lyrics reiterating personal liberation, a fear of time and deciding one’s path in life. Amirpour has compared good music to good sex, with her choice of music alluding to The Girl’s love of techno, the way she feels in the darkness and how music fills her with emotion. It envelops every setting, lifting moments of sensual dance with the diegetic sound of a record playing, or overlaying scenes of tension. For example, her choice of Farah’s dreamlike monologue song, Dancing Girls, while she is applying lipstick and eyeliner before heading out for her next kill, builds excitement and anticipation about how she’ll stalk her next victim. The Girl is silent while the lyrics talk about the intoxication of opium and dying young. We don’t see her consume any narcotics, instead, her escape is through music. There are evident nods to the youthful rock era design of The Lost Boys (1987) through Arsha’s leather clad outfit and the vampire’s disco ball dream sequence. Amirpour has also referenced this film as a homage to Jim Jarmusch’s art-house romance Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), in which the soundtrack figures prominently to enhance the visual malaise and other moods of its protagonists. The love between the vampires in Jarmush’s tale and between The Girl and Arash emerge from a curiosity about the world, abstract thoughts and the intoxication of sound. After Arash is pushed back to the The Girl’s home on a skateboard, after tripping hard on a pill and getting lost, a music video style scene commences: set to the booming backdrop of Death by White Lies, we watch as she tips his head back and her lips move towards his neck. It’s a gentle, slow-motioned capture, enchanted by the chromatic choice to be shot in black and white, before she settles on his chest. The lyric that she does this to, ‘This fear’s got a hold on me’ is captured in this moment; of her fearing intimacy with someone who isn’t out to harm her, and his fear of letting go with her while intoxicated. This is a profound moment where they exist peacefully in a safe environment with each other, and expresses that, while she refuses to let men objectify her, she still has agency over her sexuality and sexual consent. 

Ana Lily Amirpour has designed a liberating fantasia of a film, that soaks the viewer in a symphony of sensual sound, grounded in characters wrestling to free themselves from societal constructs. It has resulted in an evocative and wholly enjoyable piece of art. This architecture of a female vampire, with complex morals and feminist intentions breathes new life into well-trodden folklore, keeping the bloody mystery of this supernatural creature and refusing to let women be victims any longer.

 Elle Haywood   is a freelance film and culture writer, festival juror and submissions reviewer. She is currently the Associate Editor at Take One Magazine and has written for Take One, Vague Visages, Film Stories, JumpCut and Next Best Picture. She is studying a Masters in Film Studies, Programming and Curation at the National Film & Television School. Her work specialises in international film festivals focusing on Scandinavia and Western Europe, sociopolitical events and independent filmmaking. 

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