Review #189: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)


This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #44: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a Persian/Iranian horror/western (?!) film about... a vampire, and drugs I guess?

I've seen this movie before- I watched it five or six years ago, during my yearly ritual of watching and reviewing 31 horror movies every October. (I seem to be re-doing a lot of that lately.) I don't remember exactly what was in my review, but I do remember saying that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night was the most boring movie I watched that year.

When I started watching it this time, I chided myself for how wrong I was! Maybe I didn't really pay attention last time, I told myself. Because this one started out really good! I was engaged by the film's striking visual style, the interesting worldbuilding, the genuine characters, and just the overall feel and pace of the first thirty minutes or so. How could I have said this movie was boring?

...And then the movie got boring.

I swear to you, about thirty minutes into this film, it's like the filmmakers ran out of content or something. After what started as an intriguing story about Arash, a hard-working man trying to help his father kick a drug addiction but then getting his car stolen by a local drug lord, the drug lord is killed by a vampire (simply named "The Girl"). Arash gets his car back, but also steals the drug lord's drugs, and I guess sells them? Then there's a scene where Arash takes one of the drug pills, and the movie gets boooooring. There's like a ten-minute scene of him tripping balls while sitting on the ground talking to The Girl, then like a ten-minute scene of them at her house just standing around while music plays. Then a few more like ten-minute scenes where basically nothing happens, Arash's dad dies and there's this cat that has some significance, and then the movie ends with like a ten-minute scene of Arash and The Girl driving out to the desert, he looks conflicted about something, but then they just continue on anyway. And then the movie ends.

Like, I don't understand what this movie is trying to say. I don't understand what it's trying to do. I don't get why I should care about anything that happens after minute thirty. The first thirty minutes has a ton of fun little details (the drug lord guy has a pac-man tattoo on his neck, and the gun that he sets down on his case full of drugs & money is actually a Nintendo Zapper), but then once Arash has his drug trip it's like a switch got flipped in the writer's room where they stuck a note on the drawing board that said "Stop coming up with content" and "Scenes should have no more than two lines per minute". I tried so hard to give this movie a fair shake but all it did was prove my previous assessment correct!

It's not the worst film I've seen, but it DID commit the cardinal sin of bad movies: being boring. Maybe put this film on in the background while you're doing other things, but don't sit down and watch it expecting to be entertained.

Overall Rating: 2/10 Brick Wall Punches

More Accurate Title: A Girl Skateboards Home Alone at Night

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