Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024) Review and Summary

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Plot Summary

Sasha is a vampire. It isn’t 100% clear when she turned, since we see her as a child and when “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” settles in with Sara Montpetit as lead, Sasha is then 68. However, what is clear, and annoying to most of her family, is that Sasha does not wish to feed like normal vampires do. Add in her fangs refuse to come out and this has made it so, for decades, she has fed from blood bags.

However, with her mother, Georgette, growing tired of enabling this behavior, she is forced to live with her cousin Denise and either feed on a human or starve. Enter Paul, someone who utterly hates his life and contemplates suicide. Seeing him almost do so leads Sasha’s fangs to come out, so the idea becomes, while she may not be able to take the life of a human who is happy or even a jerk, someone who is going to die anyway? She can wrap her head around that.

Cast and Character Guide

Character’s Name	Actor’s Name
Sasha	Sara Montpetit
Georgette	Sophie Cadieux
Denise	Noémie O’Farrell
Aurélien	Steve Laplante
Victorine	Marie Brassard
Paul	Félix-Antoine Bénard

Sasha

Sasha is a 68-year-old vampire who struggles with the idea of feeding from humans directly. It disgusts her and keeps her fangs from coming out so she can feed. So, generally, she just drinks from blood bags like a kid would a Capri sun.

Georgette

Georgette is Sasha’s mom, who is much harder on her and would rather coerce her daughter to be normal than go through the process of getting blood bags on a regular basis.

Denise

Denise is Sasha’s cousin, and she is like a big sister to her.

Aurélien

Aurélien is Sasha’s father, and he loves her more than anyone. When Georgette tries to come down on her, he does his best to advocate for Sasha. But there are only so many decades he could get his way before Georgette had to firmly put her foot down.

• The actor is also known for their role in “Babysitter.”

Victorine

Victorine is Sasha’s aunt and perhaps the matriarch of the would-be coven Sasha is in.

Paul

Paul is a teenage boy who is bullied at work and is notably awkward at school. While his mom loves him and defends him, she also recognizes something is wrong with her son and tries to encourage him to go to counseling, but talking about his problems seemingly aren’t changing his problems.

Additional Information

1. Movies Similar To This:
   1. Let The Right One In (“Let The Right One In” completes its first season with few blemishes as it presents an emotional story with violence, love, and sacrifice.)

Content Information

• Dialog: Cursing
• Violence: Blood, Torture, Self-Harm
• Sexual Content: Nothing Notable
• Miscellaneous: Nothing Notable

Review

Our Rating: Positive (Worth Seeing)

Good If You Like

• Vampire movies that aren’t about vampires being suave, cool, and sexy

Check out our movies page for our latest movie reviews and recommendations.

Highlights

Sasha’s Relationships

From Paul to her parents and cousin, Sasha’s relationships are handled in such a way that it can feel like a reset if you are into vampire productions. For one, the vampires she lives with aren’t a coven but a family. There isn’t a maker and their rebellious child dynamic like you get in “Interview With The Vampire.” Georgette and Aurélien very much come off like a mom and dad, with a slightly generic dynamic in that Georgette is much harder on Sasha and Aurélien loves her to the point of enabling her. But, even if you may feel like that dynamic is overdone, and the film doesn’t complicate it, there is no denying how sweet it is.

However, when it comes to Paul and Sasha, there is a different kind of cuteness there. Paul reads as someone who is awkward, potentially on the autism spectrum, and while he is unhappy about his life, Sasha is a silver lining. Yes, partly because him giving his life so she can live makes his death have meaning, so it makes the possibility of him killing himself easier; however, Sasha needs a bit of foreplay.

If not, she has to discover the specific thing she needs from Paul to get her fangs out, and in the process, we watch them spend time together and develop what could be seen as a romance. Note that “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” does not confirm if Paul and Sasha ever saw each other as potential romantic partners. Rather, they seem to just get each other after a certain point, and while not exactly the same, they do compliment one another.

This leaves Aunt Victorine and Denise, who bring a lot of the humor we’ll go into below. You can tell that Aunt Victorine, who is about 300+ years old, is torn between Georgette’s frustrations and Aurélien’s desire to have some form of understanding. After all, even if the film doesn’t touch upon too heavily what it is like to be a vampire for an extended period of time, you can tell it is hard, and she wants Sasha to be able to live on her own like Denise.

Now, as for cousin Denise, the exposure therapy she tries in her attempts to coerce Sasha to drink from a human made the audience I was with laugh. Though, generally speaking, with Denise being the person Sasha spends the most time around besides Paul, like there is an unspoken, pseudo-romantic relationship there, you can almost see Denise like the big sister who knows their little sister is weird, but still likes and is proud of them. Thus giving us one of the healthiest vampire relationships we have ever seen.

The Music

From Brenda Lee to Sasha’s various scenes playing piano, one of the things “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” surprisingly does is make it so that, while Sasha being a vampire is part of her hook, it isn’t all she has to offer. Her music taste, how she dances, and how the film goes from making it an active part of the scene to background music, keeps things rather diverse, and it pushes you to feel the music isn’t just to fill the silence. Which I think too many films are scared of as if ambient sounds are as taboo as making a film less than 90 minutes.

The Humor

So, to start off, we didn’t necessarily find this funny, but the New York audience we were with did – keep that in mind. With that said, between Paul and Denise and the rest of the family, there are plenty of awkward or comical moments that allow most of the cast to shine. One of the times I definitely chuckled was when Paul, as he bonded with Sasha, going on a bit of a revenge tour. During that, we see a series of funny confrontations that include his school’s principal getting her just due.

On The Fence

The Unanswered Questions

For those who are really interested in vampire lore, “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” might be frustrating. It does stick to the basics, like vampires not being able to go out into the sun or they die and needing blood to survive, as well as having some superhuman abilities. However, there are things that you may wish were gone further.

First off, how were Sasha and Denise born? Can vampires in their world have kids? Also, when the film began, things were rather weird. How? In the beginning, it seemed like we were going to witness a vampire world where vampires and humans might coexist in the open. After all, how else and why would vampires be able to go to offices and see a dentist to consult why Sasha’s fangs don’t come out?

Add in the process of how to make vampires seems weird, and it just makes you wonder why certain vampire rules were chosen? It may even lead to you wishing there was more time spent on world-building to get a firmer grasp on what “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person” introduces you to.

General Information

Film Length	1 Hour 30 Minutes
Date Released	June 21, 2024
How To Watch	Theatrical
Distributor	Drafthouse Films
Director(s)	Ariane Louis-Seize
Writer(s)	Ariane Louis-Seize, Christine Doyon
Genre(s)	Comedy Drama Fantasy Young Adult Non-English (French)
Content Rating	Not Rated

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