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Genre in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

As an Iranian, spaghetti-western, vampire, horror film, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a perfect example of genre mixing, as it samples elements from an array of differing genres in order to create the one unified piece. Spoken in Persian, with English subtitles, the film is firstly falls into the foreign film genre, its use of subtitled dialogue adding to the mystery of the film, and capturing, and holding, the viewer’s attention. The film is also attributed as being a spaghetti-western, as it draws largely from traditional western films, as evidenced by the consistently deliberate cinematography, and use of standoffs throughout the film, seen whenever the girl encounters a new victim. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night furthermore follows the conventional character composition of westerns, with slight twists and ambiguities that blur the lines between character tropes, and further, morality: Atti the prostitute takes on the role of the ‘whore,’ Saeed as the ‘villain,’ and both Arash and the girl are, dubiously, disparate depictions of the ‘cowboy’: characters who, whilst being the film’s protagonists, ultimately err on the side of good despite engaging in highly morally dubious activities (drug dealing and murder respectively). The film’s vampirical element could lend it to the fantasy element, however the girl’s dark depiction draws more from classical vampire films such as Nosferatu and Dracula, and thus may be more correctly classified within the horror genre. Horror aspects, identified by their ability to shock, or ‘horrify’ the audience, can be seen throughout the film, most notably within Saeed’s death scene, in which the girl bites off his finger, and then slowly torments him with it, before going in for the kill. The film’s use of suspense leading up to the girl biting off Saeed’s finger, and the impending sense of doom created thereafter, combined with the terror of Saeed, are classic emotional indicators of the horror genre. Ultimately, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a highly stylized example of effective genre mixing, drawing upon the conventions of a range of differing film genres and the styles inherent within them, to create what stands as a highly unique film.