Reviews
‘Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’ Review – A Charming Vampire Rom Com
Québécois filmmaker Ariana Louis-Seize’s French-language rom-com, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, bears a lot in common with offbeat vampire features like What We Do in the Shadows and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The absurdly long title, of course, is one of the more obvious commonalities, but it’s also in the quirky lead protagonist with a staunch moral center and a bewitching sense of humor.
While that means that Louis-Seize’s feature debut isn’t forging new ground, it makes up for that with an overabundance of wholesome charm.
We meet Sasha (Lilas-Rose Cantin) as a young vampire on her birthday, where her doting father (Steve LaPlante) and more prudent mother (Sophie Cadieux) worry about their daughter’s empathy problem during a clown’s performance. Most parents would be proud to have such a sensitive child who’s deeply concerned with the wellbeing of others, but most parents aren’t vampires trying to raise their children to fend for themselves. The clown’s birthday party appearance ends in a feeding frenzy that leaves Sasha traumatized, and she grows into adulthood so afraid to harm others that she’s unable to spring her fangs and feeds exclusively on blood bags.
Considering Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is now 62 years old with the fresh face of a teen, her empathy problem forces her parents to cut off her blood supply in the hopes she’ll finally learn to hunt. Then she notices the suicidal Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a lonely teen who may hold the answers to both of their problems in life.
While Paul’s eagerness to leave this mortal coil makes for an easy solution to Sasha’s ethical feeding issue, the pair instead forge an unlikely friendship that blossoms into something more. Louis-Seize, who co-wrote the screenplay with Christine Doyon, evokes an almost Tim Burton-esque sense of gothic whimsy that lightens the existential themes and lets the quirkiness of its characters shine brightest. There’s a moodiness to the color palette, with Shawn Pavlin’s crisp cinematography complimenting the fog-swept darkness that juxtaposes the narrative’s lightheartedness with effortless style. And as stylish as Humanist Vampire is, it also works in favor of the comedy.
Sasha lives in a world that makes it look cool to be a vampire, yet she runs from any situation where death could become a likely reality. Sara Montpetit infuses Sasha with the appropriate blend of awkward teen and quirky cool girl, instilling easy rooting interest. Félix-Antoine Bénard is also winsome as the timid Paul, whose heart is as big as his desire to be done with living. Though it’s Noémie O’Farrell who steals every scene as Sasha’s pushy cousin Denise, a savvy vamp determined to teach Sasha self-reliance no matter how much it backfires on her.
Morose topics of death and suicide are handled with genteel care, as Sasha and Paul navigate their new relationship as it sparks their glum lives to life. It’s a sweet and wholesome coming-of-age rom com centered around individuality, but one that isn’t interested in wading too deep into vampire lore or even the loftier themes it dabbles with.
It’s a stylish, cute date night feature, as fangless and lovely as its central vampire.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person opens in NYC and LA theaters on June 21, followed by a nationwide rollout.
The Adams Family, an actual family unit of filmmakers comprised of father John Adams, mother Tobey Poser, and their daughters, quickly established a punk rock DIY spirit, wearing multiple hats each on films The Deeper You Dig, Hellbender, and last year’s Where the Devil Roams. That continues in their latest, Hell Hole, an ambitious ode to the classic creature feature. It’s not the gory creature effects that elevate a classic setup in this scrappy effort, though it certainly helps. It’s the way the Adams Family stretch their creative muscles further, opting for a fun, zany creature feature with a heavy metal attitude and dry humor.
Hell Hole opens in an unexpected place: Serbian territory in 1814, where French soldiers fighting for Napoleon Bonaparte (including one played by Subspecies‘ Anders Hove) are starving and desperate for food. A gift horse is literally trotted out to them by a mysterious woman, who leaves them to their doom as something soon erupts from the animal in a gory fashion. Cut to the present, where the area is now the site of an American-led fracking operation led by Emily (Tobey Poser).
We’re introduced to Emily’s sarcastic but tough-as-nails style of leadership as well as her team, which includes John (John Adams), Teddy (Max Portman), Nikola (Aleksandar Trmčić), and Sofija (Olivera Peruničić), the latter of whom are more environmentalists assigned to keep watch and advise on and prioritize conservation efforts. That comes in handy when the team unearths a dormant parasite that awakens and becomes determined to find a new host.
It’s the precise type of setup that calls to mind films like The Thing, yet it quickly becomes apparent that the Adams Family is more interested in riffing on the classics than adhering to them. To start, their tentacled creature has a rather hysterical means of bodily invasion; man is the warmest place to hide, after all. Adams, Adams, and Poser’s script does mine this particular aspect of the creature’s behavior for all its humor, and the filmmakers find amusing ways to keep track of the creature’s current whereabouts. Instead of instilling a palpable sense of paranoia at a mysterious, carnivorous species in their midst, Hell Hole instead mines the scenario for gory horror laughs.
John Adams and Tobey Poser, who wrote the screenplay with daughter Lulu Adams, also star in the film, with Adams composing the film’s guitar-heavy score. Adams also edits the film, drawing inspiration from his heavy rock score as scene transitions look and sound like a music video. All of this is to say that their DIY ethos is still every bit on display, injecting a lot of personality even when the production design leans into the sparseness of the drill site. The sparse visuals let the creature effects take center stage, and the Adams Family has enlisted some impressive talent for that. SFX legend Todd Masters (“From,” Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight) and his MastersFX team handled the mollusk-like entity’s designs and effects, with Adams Family collaborator Trey Lindsay handling visual effects and stop motion animation.
More than just splattering buckets of blood everywhere and creating tentacled mayhem, this creature has personality. When the bulk of the dig crew is designated fodder, usually in the most bumbling way for our entertainment, Hell Hole lets its exasperated entity blow off steam and play. It’s preposterous, and it knows it, riffing on everything from over-the-top exposition dumps to making the most asinine choices when faced with a killer parasite. The Adams Family grounds it all with a razor-sharp character in Emily, darkly sweet views on parenthood, and wry commentary on everything from environmentalism to American exceptionalism.
Hell Hole is another scrappy, DIY love letter to the genre from the Adams Family. It’s a punk rock ode to the creature feature, one that intentionally honors its warts, too. While the budgetary constraints and relentlessly dry sense of humor would polarize in lesser hands, here, it’s an asset and part of the film’s overall charm. The Adams Family gets playful, delivering a gory, squirm-inducing creature feature that plays more like an ultra-violent workplace comedy.
Hell Hole premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival and releases on Shudder on August 23, 2024.
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