Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person review – ethical kills for teen bloodsucker

Imagine Beetlejuice-era Winona Ryder playing Amelie (dressed in goth black naturally), and you’ve got a pretty good impression of the heroine in this cool offbeat horror comedy. Her name is Sasha and she’s a teenage bloodsucker with serious ethical qualms about killing humans. The film is from French-Canadian director Ariane Louis-Seize, and it’s a funny-smart take on adolescent angst and loneliness. It also takes us into familiar territory of the vampire coming-of-age story, where there is nothing more romantic than plunging your teeth into the neck of your number one crush.

The movie opens with a flashback that explains Sasha’s phobia over sucking blood. A decade or so earlier, she’s a little girl of about eight years old (played by Lilas-Rose Cantin) and her parents have arranged a clown as a birthday surprise; the treat being that Sasha gets to eat him after the show – you’re a big girl now, darling. But little Sasha is so traumatised by the incident (according to the vampire child psychiatrist the family consults) that 10 years later, her fangs still haven’t developed. Instead, she is living at home, dressing like an art school kid, drinking blood from her parents’ kills much to her mother’s irritation (“cadavers don’t grow on trees!”).

But then Sasha (Sara Montpetit) spots a boy, and feels a stir. Her fangs pop out. The boy in question is Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard) who is depressed and bullied at school. Paul is planning to kill himself anyway, so he offers himself to Sasha as an ethical victim. Their relationship is more sweet than sexual, and all round the film has less bite than you’d expect. But it’s stylishly shot by first-timer Louis-Seize, a bit reminiscent of an early Jim Jarmusch movie with its deadpan sense of humour, never trying too hard, just a little bit too cool for school.

• Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is on Mubi from 11 October in the UK and to rent on Apple TV+ in Australia.