Review: 'Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person' [A Century of Evolution in Vampire Cinema: From Domination to Stories of Consent]

The thumbnail caught my eye on Amazon Prime, so I decided to watch 'Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person' on a whim.
――That title is long!

This film is an offbeat comedy featuring a beautiful young vampire as the protagonist, but I felt it was a gentle fable about people carrying the loneliness of the post-COVID era rediscovering 'empathy' through the existence of vampires.

Come to think of it, vampires are, alongside zombies, the star monsters that cinema has depicted for the longest time. While zombies, as 'vessels without an inner self,' were entities into which any social narrative could be substituted, vampires have always depicted codependent relationships between people through the act of 'blood-sucking.'
The history of vampire cinema is the history of human society itself.

Every time the era changes, vampires have reflected in their red eyes the form of the 'other' that people fear, desire, and seek to forgive.

Here, while tracing the trajectory of past vampire films, I would like to consider the modernity shown by the work 'Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person'.

I. The Progenitor — Sex and Death as Taboo

The vampire image born in late 19th-century Europe was already a symbol of 'repressed desire' in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1897).
Under the strict sexual morality of the Victorian era, it was an existence where a man's violent libido and the ecstasy of a woman being carried off by a 'terrifying yet attractive man' mingled.
Blood-sucking was a metaphor for intrusion, temptation, and the moment when reason collapses.

In the earliest vampire film, 'Nosferatu' (1922), sex was converted into images of 'infection' and 'death,' and the vampire was a symbol of a plague coming from the outside. In other words, the vampire was a metaphor for the 'inner monster' that reflects the fear of the instincts—desires—that humans have suppressed.

II. Liberation — As a Fable of Eros and Freedom

From the 1950s to the 1970s, along with the changes in postwar values, vampire cinema changed its appearance from a symbol of taboo to a symbol of liberation.
The 'Dracula' series (1958–) by Hammer Film linked 'blood and flesh' with sensual visuals, turning sexual taboos into an open horror spectacle.

III. Loneliness — Sublimation into a Romantic Existence

In the 1980s and 1990s, a movement to reinterpret vampires as 'intellectually lonely beings who transcend humanity' occurred.
In Tony Scott's 'The Hunger' (1983), the female vampire played by Catherine Deneuve gains eternal beauty and dominance, treating sexuality and death as equivalent. The vampire is no longer a perpetrator but an entity that dominates desire, and 'sucking blood' changes into an act of 'seizing life.'

'Interview with the Vampire' (1994) became a romantic work that questions love, eternity, and ethics through male vampires.
Sharing blood changes from a sexual act into a 'contract of empathy' that heals loneliness.The vampire has evolved from a symbol of greed into a philosopher who speaks of the tragedy of existence.

IV. Nomads — Those Who Survive Culture

Kathryn Bigelow's 'Near Dark' (1987) depicted vampires as protagonists of an outlaw-style road movie, presenting them not as plunderers but as 'choosers of life.'

Inheriting that lineage is Jim Jarmusch's 'Only Lovers Left Alive' (2013). The vampire couple living for eternity quietly watches the end of human civilization, continuing to suck 'blood' as a metaphor for culture and memory.
The vampire is no longer a monster, but a nomad of art and intellect—changing into an existence that preserves the human spirit across eras.

V. Structural Critique — A Fable of Domination and Exploitation

Entering the 21st century, the vampire became a mirror image reflecting the social structure itself.
'The Girl with All the Gifts' (2016) entrusts poverty and discrimination to the vampire myth through a boy's loneliness and violence.
'Renfield' (2023) is a comedy that makes Dracula a 'power-harassing boss,' depicting blood-sucking as a parody of a domination structure.
In 'Abigail' (2024), a helpless girl vampire reverses the 'eat or be eaten' structure. Sucking blood is no longer a metaphor for sexuality.
It is a metaphor for power and a symbol of social exploitation. The theme of vampire cinema has shifted from sexuality to system criticism.

VI. Ethics — Toward an Era of 'Consent' and 'Empathy'

And then, 'Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person' (2023).

This work by director Ariane Louis-Seize creates a new turning point in the lineage of vampire cinema.
Sasha, a 'humanist vampire' who feels guilty about killing people by sucking their blood, meets Paul, a 'person who wants to die,' and enters into a strange contract of 'blood-sucking based on consent'.

Sasha is a vampire who tries to choose suicide by refusing to suck blood, but Paul, the 'person who wants to die,' tries to offer his own life to keep her alive.

In this setting, the act of blood-sucking is depicted not as violence or temptation, but as an 'ethical agreement.' Sharing blood is sharing each other's choices of death and life.

Isn't this a fable of the most human act of 'touching the pain of others' amidst the loneliness and indifference of the post-COVID era?

Here, the vampire has finally transformed from a 'being that threatens the living' into a 'being that stands by the dead.' A vampire that chooses empathy over violence, and understanding over domination—
that figure is the very embodiment of our desire to live alongside others.

Conclusion: The 'Human Form' Reflected by Vampires

The century-long history of vampire cinema is also a record of how humans have faced 'desire,' 'death,' and 'the other.' The vampire, once a monster of desire, became a philosopher speaking of loneliness, and now, it has transformed into a companion that understands the pain of others and supports them.

In other words, isn't this proof that we ourselves have transitioned from an 'era desperate to take or be taken of one's physicality based on desire' to an 'era that longs to connect with people and share hearts'?

The vampire is a mirror reflecting human change.
And what is reflected in that mirror is the very 'human form' that each era continues to depict.