ABSTRACT
What are the features of a feminist vampire film? Ana Lily Amirpour’s contemporary classic A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is an exceptional film—moody, poetic, and strange. Its female vampire wears a chador and rides a skateboard. This chapter argues that Amirpour’s film takes the vampire genre in a radical new and feminist direction. The vampire, known simply as ‘the Girl’, presents us with her life and her desire to find a new identity while protecting the exploited and marginalised. She haunts the streets of Bad City, an imaginary Iranian town set in the Californian desert, where she selects her victims with care; they are almost always violent, exploitative men. The Girl is in revolt against the abject horrors of Bad City, a nightmarish patriarchy where violent men abuse women, sex workers, and any other disempowered souls they can exploit. In addition, Amirpour cross-references the history of the vampire film while drawing out its racial tensions and new ethnic directions. Amirpour’s depiction of her lone vigilante as an avenging female vampire who wears a chador offers a powerful example of the mythic monstrous-feminine of Feminist New Wave Cinema.
