It’s always refreshing to witness a new take on a well-worn genre. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, the feature directorial debut of Montreal-based director and co-writer Ariane Louis-Seize, doesn’t exactly contain any vampire movie tropes we haven’t seen before. It’s a little bit of a teen movie, a little bit of a horror film, a little bit of a dark comedy, and a little bit of a romance, and it doesn’t totally boast the cleverness of its mouthful of a title. But the concoction Louis-Seize mixes out of all these ingredients contains a unique potency, resulting in a bold yet delicate film that navigated the tough issue of teen mental health and suicide.
Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is a vampire, but she isn’t like the rest of her family. She needs to consume the blood of humans to survive, but from a very young age, she expresses an extreme distaste for killing innocent, unsuspecting people; a quirky bit that leans into the ties between sex and vampirism shows that her fangs can’t get it up, unable to harden and sharpen when the moment arrives. Her family hunts for her, providing her with sacks of blood after the nastiest part of the activity is over and done with, but as she grows older, her sensitivity drives a rift between her parents, who eventually cut off her supply from them and force her out on her own to learn to fend for herself. At a support group, Sasha crosses paths with Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a depressed and suicidal teen. Prior to their meeting, the film briefly diverts its focus from Sasha to Paul, depicting the grueling nature of a life that seems to keep trodding all over him: a demeaning job at a local bowling alley, school bullies who beat him up, teachers and a principal who don’t respect him. In a funny bit of foreshadowing of his eventual encounter with Sasha, Paul kills a bat flying through the gym during class and distressing the students, but rather than being celebrated for saving the day, he’s punished and his mother called to pick him up from school for traumatizing his classmates. In a gently revealing conversation with his mother, who nudges him to try therapy again, Paul plainly states that he doesn’t want to be alive anyway.
The matter-of-fact way in which Humanist Vampire treats the mental hurdles Sasha and Paul struggle to mount, both wrestling with death (albeit coming at the topic from different angles) results in the film striking a not-too-dark tone without belittling the seriousness of its subject matter. When Sasha and Paul do meet, their attraction isn’t based so much on romance as it is the ability to fulfill a mutual need. Sasha needs blood but doesn’t want to kill an innocent life, and Paul wants to die anyway. There’s an offbeat indie teen movie vibe to their early interactions, in which Sasha (every bit the picture of the ideal goth girl, from her dark hair and razor-straight bangs to her pale complexion and Hot Topic-adjacent wardrobe) invites Paul to her room, where they listen to records and awkwardly connect over their shared interests. This light atmosphere continues after Paul and Sasha reach an agreement, but one that Sasha refuses to hold up until after she has helped Paul fulfill a sort of bucket list, imbuing him with a boldness he’s never before possessed to get back at all the bullies who have wronged him. Montpetit and Bernard share a low-key yet warm chemistry that simmers throughout these scenes, but also the quieter, more intimate conversations they share about their desires.
There are some interesting family dynamics—like Sasha’s aunt who is continually frustrated in her efforts to train Sasha to hunt, which includes seducing men— hovering in the background of Humanist Vampire that I wish had been explored more; at the expense of taking time away from Paul and Sasha, it might have fleshed out their world and made the film feel a little less confining. And yet, confined is the most accurate way to describe how both Paul and Sasha feel in their respective worlds. When the finale comes, as tidy (there’s no easy way to solve severe depression and suicidal tendencies in the space of a 90 minute movie, and the story circumvents a lot of those complexities in its final stretch) and rather anti-climatic as it is, it reads as a burst of freedom, as Sasha and Paul fully stepping into the skins they are most comfortable in. Perhaps that’s really the most refreshing aspect of Humanist Vampire, beyond its genre-mixing: that it’s comforting, if routine, ending— a vampire movie that celebrates new beginnings rather than solely reveling in death— is so gratifying.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person opens in select theaters on June 21, and expands to theaters nationwide on June 28. Runtime: 90 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 