Vamp or Not? Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl

Having upgraded to Blu-Ray, I was giving classic horror Let’s Scare Jessica to Death a re-watch and on the disc was a brief interview with Kim Newman. He mentioned a couple of more modern films that he said owed something (in style) to the aforementioned movie. One was the 2016, A.D. Calvo directed Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl, a film I had not seen but was available on Shudder.

Now Kim Newman had not suggested a vampire connection and I didn’t watch the film expecting one, but what I got was a great, almost psychosexual, drama with airs of Let’s Kill Jessica but, also, I think a touch a Mario Bava – specifically the section A Drop of Water in Black Sabbath. When I thought about the film, as it reached its conclusion, I realised there might be something vampiric about it. Truthfully, I had already thought about Carmilla during the running time (more in a relationship way than anything else) but to explain why, well I’m going to have to spoil the ending entirely. You’ve been warned.

Erin Wilhelmi as Adele

The film follows Adele (Erin Wilhelmi) and the opening shots follow her during the day in the countryside where she lives and, truthfully, it does paint her as lonely. She lives with her pregnant mom (Lainie Ventura) and her stepfather. Her Aunt Dora (Susan Kellermann) requires a live-in carer and her mom wants her to go. Her reluctance is overcome as we see her in the bathroom and her step-father leering, peeking through a crack. The film hints at abuse. So she moves into town, in to her Aunt's house.

picture of Dora

Aunt Dora does not leave her room, has given her the instructions (written) of always shut the door and no house guests, and has left money for her to buy the groceries she wants. The film does a grand job of generating a feeling of unheimlich, the house itself seems like a snapshot of memory (the film is set in a pre-digital year, Adele has her tape Walkman, telephones are house implements and wired but the house has an older feel still). There is a distinct wind sound when the door is open, that is blocked when closed again. We later discover that Dora is her mom’s step sister and substantially older, that she is agoraphobic (and has a heart condition) she never leaves her room when Adele is near and passes notes under the door. We see a photo of her when young with another girl blurred in the background.

seeing Beth

Shopping Adele spots a woman, with whom she seems immediately fascinated (probably due to her sense of style as much as anything). This is Beth (Quinn Shephard). Later Adele goes to a coffee shop with people but seems out of place and leaves before being served. She goes to a virtually empty diner and orders a soda and a slice, before realising she can’t afford the food and amends her order. Beth is in a booth and pays for the snack, asking Adele to sit with her. She noticed her looking at her in the supermarket. They then meet again whilst Beth is running past the house and invites herself in, despite the no guests rule, breezing past Adele's weak protestations.

Beth and Adele

As the two become closer Adele’s behaviours change. She starts buying cheaper brands for her Aunt, allowing herself the difference in change and, persuaded by Beth, buys off the shelf heart medicine rather than filling her more expensive prescription – this will eventually lead to Dora’s death, which jumps us to the climax of the film. Whilst a relationship is growing, and they do kiss, Adele’s feelings become apparently greater than Beth's, and discovering that she has slept with a (strange to Adele) man, she allows herself to be picked up by a random guy for some absolutely dispassionate sex. The pick up is observed by Beth, though she seems to vanish like a ghost (and Adele has been seeing Aunt Dora, perhaps due to guilt, so there is the chance her appearance was a figment of imagination). Beth then visits her at home entering through the door, which was left open by the man after the hook up.

like an apparition

When Adele saw Beth for the first time at the Supermarket, Beth had a pomegranate and Adele bought one, tried it but gave up trying to extract the seeds. That pomegranate seems to have sat on the table and Beth, as Adele investigates a noise, now eats it voraciously. There is, of course, the association of the pomegranate with death and tricking Persephone into returning to the underworld. Adele ends up hiding in the basement, Beth follows and seems to become a floating apparition. The film cuts forward in time and Adele's sister Dory (Frances Eve), with whom her mother was pregnant, arrives at the house, now a young woman, to look after Adele – who seems to be a prematurely old woman.

prematurely aged

So why do I think this is vampiric. Adele seems much older than she should be, her eyes milky and seems to be in Dora’s place (she sits in her Aunt’s rocking chair). However, as Dory goes through the house, we see the picture of a young Dora (framed, unlike earlier) and the girl in the picture is not blurred and it is clearly Beth. The implication for me is that Beth stole Adele’s youth and vitality (as she did Dora's before her) and is clearly much older than we knew. The fact that she devoured the pomegranate, and descended into the underworld to turn into a corpselike floating apparition that menaced Adele (we only see Adele scream and not the subsequent interaction), is clearly symbolic and all of this would indicate to me that she was an energy vampire – at least that is one reading. And I think it a fair reading for a fascinating, really worthwhile film.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK