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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
Bad City may be an oil town, but black gold hasn't brought prosperity to the majority of its inhabitants. Arash (Arash Marandi) is a hard-working young man who works as a handyman for a wealthy family, but himself lives in the slums and supports his heroin addict father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). Hossein is deeply in debt to local drug dealer/loan shark/pimp Saeed (Dominic Rains). Saeed takes Arash's beloved vintage car as partial payment on Hossein's debts, not interested in Arash's complaint that the car belongs to him, not his father.
At his job, Arash is called up to the room of daughter Shaydah (Rome Shandaloo), who flirts with him while he's doing repairs. He's trying to ignore this as he knows it's not going anywhere. When she leaves, Arash succumbs to the temptation to steal some small jewelry in hopes of trading it to Saeed for his car.
So far, shaping up to be a noir crime drama. But then Saeed runs into a girl walking home alone at night (Sheila Vand) and the genre of the movie abruptly changes.
This 2014 Iranian horror movie is shot in stylish black and white, which helps cloak the fact that although the director is Iranian-American, most major roles are played by Iranian actors, and everyone is speaking Farsi, it was actually filmed in California. Unsurprisingly, there are themes and actions in the movie that would not fly with the Iranian government.
This is one of those movies where "good" and "evil" don't really enter into it. The Girl kills people to survive, but generally preys on people that are pretty awful. Arash doesn't kill anyone himself, but is perfectly willing to profit off a corpse he finds. There doesn't seem to be any law enforcement as such, and there's a gulch with an alarming number of bodies that people have just dumped there. "Bad City' indeed. Prostitute Atti (Mozhan Navabi) sees her job as just her job and is saving to...go somewhere else, maybe? And the Street Urchin (Milad Eghbali) is mostly drifting around with not much to do. Especially after The Girl confiscates his skateboard.
This last makes for some interesting imagery. The Girl's chador resembles the classic "Dracula cloak" (which is also seen when Arash dons one.) A vampire on a skateboard seems like something you would not have seen outside a 1980s kid's cartoon. But shot in this movie it's just eerie.
The deleted scenes are also interesting. I was fascinated by the much larger role for minor character Rockabilly (Reza Sixo Safai) who in these clips addresses the camera directly if obscurely. (But I can see why they were taken out, it would have made the movie drag a lot more.)
Content note: Murder, mutilation and gore. Assault. Prostitution. Drug abuse, including a person forcibly being given drugs by needle. Partial nudity. Deleted scenes include gay-bashing. Older teens should be okay, but sensitive viewers may want to give it a pass.
This is a striking movie that's an interesting mix of foreign and familiar. Recommended to horror fans who can handle subtitles.
Bad City may be an oil town, but black gold hasn't brought prosperity to the majority of its inhabitants. Arash (Arash Marandi) is a hard-working young man who works as a handyman for a wealthy family, but himself lives in the slums and supports his heroin addict father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). Hossein is deeply in debt to local drug dealer/loan shark/pimp Saeed (Dominic Rains). Saeed takes Arash's beloved vintage car as partial payment on Hossein's debts, not interested in Arash's complaint that the car belongs to him, not his father.
At his job, Arash is called up to the room of daughter Shaydah (Rome Shandaloo), who flirts with him while he's doing repairs. He's trying to ignore this as he knows it's not going anywhere. When she leaves, Arash succumbs to the temptation to steal some small jewelry in hopes of trading it to Saeed for his car.
So far, shaping up to be a noir crime drama. But then Saeed runs into a girl walking home alone at night (Sheila Vand) and the genre of the movie abruptly changes.
This 2014 Iranian horror movie is shot in stylish black and white, which helps cloak the fact that although the director is Iranian-American, most major roles are played by Iranian actors, and everyone is speaking Farsi, it was actually filmed in California. Unsurprisingly, there are themes and actions in the movie that would not fly with the Iranian government.
This is one of those movies where "good" and "evil" don't really enter into it. The Girl kills people to survive, but generally preys on people that are pretty awful. Arash doesn't kill anyone himself, but is perfectly willing to profit off a corpse he finds. There doesn't seem to be any law enforcement as such, and there's a gulch with an alarming number of bodies that people have just dumped there. "Bad City' indeed. Prostitute Atti (Mozhan Navabi) sees her job as just her job and is saving to...go somewhere else, maybe? And the Street Urchin (Milad Eghbali) is mostly drifting around with not much to do. Especially after The Girl confiscates his skateboard.
This last makes for some interesting imagery. The Girl's chador resembles the classic "Dracula cloak" (which is also seen when Arash dons one.) A vampire on a skateboard seems like something you would not have seen outside a 1980s kid's cartoon. But shot in this movie it's just eerie.
The deleted scenes are also interesting. I was fascinated by the much larger role for minor character Rockabilly (Reza Sixo Safai) who in these clips addresses the camera directly if obscurely. (But I can see why they were taken out, it would have made the movie drag a lot more.)
Content note: Murder, mutilation and gore. Assault. Prostitution. Drug abuse, including a person forcibly being given drugs by needle. Partial nudity. Deleted scenes include gay-bashing. Older teens should be okay, but sensitive viewers may want to give it a pass.
This is a striking movie that's an interesting mix of foreign and familiar. Recommended to horror fans who can handle subtitles.
