Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person: Bloodless in the Best Way
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
This year has already seen the release of Renfield, a vampire comedy with scenes set in a 12-step support group. Who knew there was room enough for another?
Mind you, the differences between the two far outweigh the similarities. Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person, a first feature from Quebec writer-director Ariane Louis-Seize, has more in common with the 2008 Swedish childhood vampire romance Let the Right One In than it does with Nicolas Cage’s recent buckets-of-blood-fest.
Sara Montpetit (a revelation in 2021’s Maria Chapdelaine) stars as Sasha, a young vampire — which is to say she looks like a teenager and is really 68 — living in suburban obscurity and bedeviled by a problem no vampire should have to face. She doesn’t like killing people.
But she does need blood to survive. And so, she mopes around the house like the ultimate Goth teen, moodily slurping bags of blood from the fridge, while Mom and Dad remind her that hey, that stuff doesn’t grow on trees, you know.
She thinks she may have hit on a solution when she sees Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard) about to throw himself off the roof of the bowling alley where he works. (Not only is this pathos atop pathos, but the two-storey drop isn’t even likely to kill him!) What if her victim is, as the French say, “un suicidaire consentant?”
Sasha next runs into Paul at a support group for those with suicidal thoughts. She’s gone there after toying with the idea of eating poutine, which we’re given to understand is not just bad for vampire’s arteries. It’s actually deadly. She takes him home and they listen to her recording of Brenda Lee singing “Emotions,” a great choice since it’s pretty much what a “teenaged” vampire born in 1955 would enjoy.
Even at a trim 90 minutes, Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person wouldn’t seem to have enough to keep it going past that mouthful of a title. But Louis-Seize crafts a warm (if dark) camaraderie between these two misfits, neither of whom feels at home in the world. Paul is bullied at school; Sasha is so milquetoast, she doesn’t even have proper canine teeth.
And the director doesn’t resort to much in the way of blood, other than those baggies that Sasha so enjoys drinking. Much of the violence takes place off-screen, and whether that’s an artistic choice or a budgetary one, it’s proof that you don’t need gore to score. Humanist Vampire manages to bare its heart without baring its fangs.
Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person. Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize, Starring Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard. In theatres October 13.
