Back again and sticking with the horror offerings of Mubi for this month’s Mubi Monday installments. This week, we have a movie that was just added to the service on Friday, the 11th…Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023).
Title: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Director: Ariane Louis-Seize
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes
Released: September 3, 2023 (Venice Film Festival)
Available to stream: Exclusively on Mubi
If you happened to be a vampire, I’d imagine that one of your favorite things would be to feast on the blood of humans. That is, unless you happen to be young Sasha (Lilas-Rose Cantin). You see, Sasha is a vampire that actively avoids inflicting harm. While a dying human brings out the blood lust in her family members, for Sasha it brings out deep levels of compassion.
Does she still like the taste of blood though? Absolutely. In fact, she loves to drink it out of blood bags like it’s a juice box. But the act of obtaining blood, that’s where Sasha draws the line. We see this early on when, for Sasha’s birthday, her family invite over a clown to perform…and to become a feast. As the clown pivots to magic tricks, he crams himself into a trunk. With the trunk closed and the clown struggling to get out, Sasha’s family urges her to do the deed. However, Sasha refuses which absolutely enrages her mother.
While her father has always been supportive of her humanist ways, Sasha’s mother firmly believes that Sasha needs to grow up and start hunting. Ultimately, her mother eventually wins out and forces an older Sasha (Sara Montpetit) to hunt for her own blood.
So now with her survival dependent on doing the one thing she vehemently opposes, how will Sasha manage to survive?
Surely there has to be an ethical way for Sasha to maneuver this precarious situation…right?
I will admit that I went into Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) uncertain of what I was about to experience. Luckily, this happens to be one of those scenarios where I walk away from a movie feeling glad that I gave it a chance.
A coming-of-age story that also includes a teenage romance and is sprinkled with dark humor throughout isn’t necessarily something that sounds like it should work. However, Louis-Seize shows, in her feature directorial debut, that she is going to be a force to be reckoned with. She pulls off and executes the genre word salad perfectly.
Sasha is a late bloomer, and an outsider in her own family, that is trying to find her way. The introduction to her compassionate side won me over instantly. Same with Paul, a young man who isn’t certain where he fits in and sees the ultimate way out as his only path forward. You feel for the inner turmoil they both are suffering through and want to see them succeed individually and as a pair. The chemistry between Montpetit’s Sasha and Bénard’s Paul just oozes out onto the screen. Those two are incredible together and offer up a tender young love that doesn’t come off as contrived.
Yes, all of that sounds like it makes for a fairly heavy watch. However, Louis-Seize masterfully sprinkles in some rather dark humor all throughout. It’s never enough to distract you from what’s happening, rather just enough to help keep things light…in a dark way.
If you’re looking for a vampire movie that doesn’t exactly follow the paint-by-number structure of vampire movies, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) is exactly what you’re looking for.
Well, now it’s your turn.
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