Film Review: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Art et Essai
In Theaters: 07.19

Whether you’re a longtime Buffy fan who is still mourning the discovery that Joss Whedon was the real monster all along, or you who grew up on the Twilight series and can’t revisit it because you’ve finally realized that they were all absolutely wretched, sometimes being a fan of teenage vampire stories just plain sucks. Fear not, for Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is here at last to slake your thirst.

Sasha (Sara Montpetit, Maria Chapdelaine, Falcon Lake) is a young vampire in Québec, and she has refused to kill ever since being traumatized as a child by a clown at her birthday party. It wasn’t so much the clown that bothered Sasha as when the family decided that he could double as both the entertainment and the refreshments, hoping to jumpstart the development of Sasha’s fangs. Now that Sasha is a 68-year-old teenager, still unfanged, sipping blood bags through a straw isn’t cutting it anymore. In frustration, her parents, Aurélien (Steve LaPlante, Viking) and Georgette (Sophie Cadieux, Lâcher prise) send her to live with her older cousin, Denise (Noémie O’Farrell, Fabuleuses), who attempts to teach Sasha how to hunt. Sasha runs away and stumbles upon a support group for depressed and suicidal individuals, where she meets a teenager named Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard, Maria) who is bullied at school and generally doesn’t find much joy in life. After learning the truth, Paul offers his life to Sasha, seeing it as a win-win situation where he gets to die without suffering and she gets a free meal. A deal is struck, and the pact soon evolves into a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s final wishes before dawn. While all problems may seem to be solved, Sasha still struggles with complex feelings about her vampiric nature, as well as her growing bond with Paul.

While it certainly has strong elements of both the satirical and the macabre, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is a deceptively beautiful film at its center, and proves to be quite enchanting. Director Ariane Louis-Seize makes her feature debut, and while one may get a whiff of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2016) emanating from the basic premise, or taste just a bit of early Tim Burton upon biting into it, this delectable film has a sweet flavor all its own running through its veins. The violence is handled both tastefully and tastily, giving gore-hungry audience members just enough to not feel cheated without losing sight of the fact that this is sensitive and cute coming-of-age romcom at heart. 

Montpetit is simply adorable as Sasha, the moon eyed oddball in an Addams-esque family. There’s something about both the performance and the actress herself that brings to mind Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, and while Sasha may be the least morbid character in the film, she still very much has the isolated, angst-ridden sensibilities of a moody teen. The running gag of her her makeshift juice boxes is both lovably cutesy and hilariously grim at the same time, and it’s hard not to instantly fall in love with this offbeat character. Bénard is endearingly earnest as the awkward Paul, and while his suicidal ideation should be the most problematic aspect of the movie, it plays within the context of a horror comedy because it never feels genuine or painful, it’s simply an interest to pursue. O’Farrell is a hoot as the exasperated Denise, who gets most of the best moments of pitch black comedy, along with Gabriel-Antoine Roy (Les oiseaux du paradis) as her literal deadbeat boyfriend, JD, a victim who she intends to kill and accidentally transforms into a vampire, getting stuck with him freeloading off of her for eternity. LaPlante is wonderful as the protective father whose supportive attitude toward his daughter’s sensitivity is surprisingly touching, even as he shares the rest of the family’s desire to see her grow into a well-adjusted young succubus. 

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is a witty and transfixing little romp, and in addition to being the best alternative date movie to come along in a number of years, it’s also got ‘Halloween tradition’ written all over it, for those who don’t mind a foreign language film. And if you really find it easier to read thousands of pages of Stephanie Meyer’s abstinence porn than 90 minutes of intermittent subtitles, I’m at a loss to help you.  –Patrick Gibbs

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