For Night Will Come – review

Director: Céline Rouzet

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

This is the a use of a vampire as a (pretty on the nose) coming of age metaphor, with a protagonist whose vampirism is never explained and so the viewer has to take as is. It actually reminded me a little of the Radleys as I watched it but with very notable differences (only one vampire and the incredibly emo tone being two that immediately spring to mind).

vampire infant

The film opens with the sounds of labour and birth. The baby is named Philémon and when a doctor enters the room, presumably a little after the birth, he encourages mom, Laurence (Élodie Bouchez), to put him to the breast. The baby suckles but a trickle of blood flows from under the baby’s mouth eventually staining the white hospital sheet. Philémon is a vampire infant. We see Laurence take him from an incubator and stealing off with him in the night,

arrival

This is not a vampire infant film, however, and the next time we see Philémon (Mathias Legout Hammond) he is an older teen in the back of a car, sat by his little sister, Lucie (Laly Mercier). The car is driven by his father Georges (Jean-Charles Clichet) and it has coverings over the window by Philémon. The family are moving to a small country village or town. They have – we hear later – been fairly isolated. The film makes a point of the crossing of a bridge, which is symbolic of coming of age.

testing light tolerance

Philémon has a medical condition that requires he have fresh blood – it can be intravenously given but later he does drink it and mentions a thirst. It also means he must avoid direct sunlight and later we see him timing himself in the sun, waiting for ill effects. These happen soon and manifest, in the first moment, as tinnitus, it rapidly makes him ill (and is ultimately deadly). There is never an attempt to explain why he is like this, his family just accept it.

Céleste Brunnquell as Camile

Both Laurence and Philémon have implanted mediports so that she can donate blood to him. The plan in this new place, however, is for her to work as a nurse in a blood donation centre and she will steal “spoiled” bags. She does this but the viewer knows it will go wrong eventually. Philémon meets a girl, Camile (Céleste Brunnquell), and starts to fall for her and she, despite an inferred other romantic interest, eventually falls for him. However, the rest of the local kids start to turn against the weird emo kid who often sits in the shade, and this is compounded when Camile cuts her hand down at the swimming spot and he can’t help but suck at the wound.

drinking blood

The issue with the film is it treads ground that many vehicles have walked, and it isn’t that vampire films don’t normally do that, they do, rather it is that it doesn’t stand out particularly in any way. We know where it is going to go, the hatred of the locals, the girl submitting to his charms (she even takes that leap to know what he is and asks him to bite her) etcetera. We even get the devouring (off screen, so the shock value is massively diminished) of a beloved pet – being his sister’s dog, mostly because it seems to bark at him specifically if he is drinking blood. It seems that drinking animal blood causes a rampant itchy rash outbreak.

wrath of the locals

The film looks good enough, and it stays on course as a discourse on adolescence, not fitting in and the unkindness of strangers. The main protagonist, as mentioned, is very angsty/emo but that is adolescence for you, I guess. It just didn’t do anything I felt was interesting with it. The Radleys, at least, had the twins offering contrasts (and some black humour), a vampire hunter and a queer aspect. This brought little to the party. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK