Being Film #19 for Hooptober 2025
It’s likely I went into Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (hereafter shortened to just Humanist Vampire…) in the best way possible: with nothing but that title and the poster in my head. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t something this delicate, romantic, and…funny. Maybe the trailer or the plot summary would have given away more of the tone, but that might have lessened the impact of such a delightful film that gets at the heart of the loneliness and depression young adults feel, as well as the awkward first steps of connecting with another soul.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Sasha is different from the other well-adjusted vampires in her family: after a traumatic clown experience her fangs don’t sprout, and violence induces compassion rather than bloodthirst. Years later she’s a sullen young woman living off the blood bags her mother brings home for the family. Cutting her off in an attempt to get her to grow up, she contemplates suicide by poutine, only to see a poster for an anonymous therapy group. There she meets Paul, a lonely, depressed young man who truly wishes to end it all. As Sasha and Paul grow closer, maybe there’s an answer to both their problems, one that doesn’t involve ending their own lives, but potentially ending others…
As much as I love hyperbole (just ask my wife), it’s no exaggeration to say that I found the feature-length debut from writer/director Ariane Louis-Seize to be revelatory in the way it uses genre to chip away at very real feelings of isolation and disconnectedness that seems so specific to the young. It isn’t, of course, and the wonder of both Louis-Seize’s script and the incredible performances of leads Sara Montpetit as Sasha and Félix-Antoine Bénard as Paul is how it gets at the universality of those feelings without once feeling maudlin.
The humor veers from pitch-black to subtle and character-driven. On the one hand you will never look at a clown the same way after what happens to the one at Humanist Vampire’s opening; on the other the sublime scene of Sasha and Paul dancing individually to a record is so charming and sweet and awkward it quickly became a touchstone film moment in my mind (the header image is from said scene). In many ways I was reminded of Amélie, but if Rooney Mara played her instead of Audrey Tautou.
I can see how some folks might take a point or two away owing to the seeming inevitability of the plot. But to me it feels earned, and allows Humanist Vampire’s brief moment of horror to cut through the humor and show more of the reality for those deemed different or outside the norm. And the ending moment takes a very macabre scene on paper and transforms it into something beautiful: meaning, love, and acceptance of the darkness of death.
I loved this movie.
Cinema Dual 
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