The Heiress was a Joe Lujan directed portmanteau film released in 2023 and had a surround that showed the Heiress (Anthony Avery, Scare Me) as the keeper of several monsters. As she and her servant Opis (Danny Bravo) feed the inmates, their stories become the segments of the movie.
As she introduces the first segment she refers to the captive as a succubus… In truth she is not, rather she is a Yuki-Onna (Judy Lay) or snow woman. Now, in fairness, Bane lists the Yuki-Onna as an energy vampire. Most famously we see her story in the Japanese anthology film Kwaidan. In that she freezes one traveller with her breath, with no evidence that she is taking his energy, but that film does add in a blood drinking element. In this we do not get any definitive energy vampirism – hence looking at the film’s use of tropes.
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| rough driving weather |
The segment is very simple. A traveller, Len (Eric Lum), is driving down a snowy road. Speaking on the phone to a loved one. The weather gets worse, killing his visibility, and so he stops the car intent on waiting it out. It is here we start to notice the big issue with the segment. It is snowing… however the snow is an effect and they used foam. This distracts from the tale as it is clearly foam and not snow. I realise that they were working around budgetary constraints but… As a snowy locale is a primary location for this creature then they should have considered a different monster type and avoided foam.
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| Judy Lay as the Yuki-Onna |
Eventually the Yuki-Onna starts moving around the car, even appearing within it. Eventually Len goes after the woman and she breathes on him, freezing him. There is nothing much else to this story and certainly nothing vampiric. However the use of the Yuki-Onna does link, as mentioned, to vampirism. Foam aside they manage to build a decent atmosphere, with very little to make the atmosphere more palpable the audience has got to trust in the filmmakers.
The imdb page is here.
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