A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night's Hidden Warning Explained

In 2014, director Ana Lily Amirpour directed the world’s first Iranian vampire Western in the form of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. While many horror fans would consider this their first voyage into the bustling world of Iranian cinema, the film is in fact an American production, though Persian is the only language spoken throughout. This isn’t the only manner in which the film subverted (and continues to subvert) expectations. In fact, nearly every layer of this film preys upon audience expectations just as its titular vampire preys upon her victims. The title alone, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, implies that viewers will be following a woman in danger, especially in the context of cultural perceptions of Iran. However, in an empowering feminist twist, it’s not the girl who is in danger. Rather, she is the danger, using her vampiric fangs to feast on several men who either attempt to seduce her or refuse to leave her alone. While much has been written on A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night as a feminist work, there’s another aspect of that’s less discussed but arguably more thematically overt within the film and its messages: drug addiction and substance abuse. It’s never explicitly stated and though the romance that hijacks the film’s second and third acts may lead one to believe otherwise, once exposed to the hidden meaning, it becomes impossible to unsee.

Contrary to the Film's Title, Arash is the Real Protagonist

In another act of subversion, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night arguably features a male protagonist. While it’s safe to assume that both the titular Girl (Sheila Vand) and pool cleaner turned drug dealer Arash (Arash Marandi) share the spotlight, Arash fundamentally drives the narrative. He is the one the audience is introduced to, the one whose struggle the audience is asked to invest in, and the one who goes through the biggest arc across the course of the film. In the beginning Arash is introduced as young, hardworking, and proud of it, flexing the number of years it took him to buy his sports car through hard-earned labor alone. His nemesis: Saeed (Dominic Rains), a drug-dealing pimp who Arash’s heroin-addicted father (Marshall Manesh) owes a colossal amount of money to. Arash sees Saeed’s crooked life and although fully aware of the torment that heroin has caused his father, internally expresses desire for what he has, given the speed and relative ease of his profits. After Saeed encounters the Girl and subsequently has his blood drunk, Arash finds the body alone and decides to steal his drugs and money (as well as his car back, after having to give it to him in exchange for his father’s heroin). It is essential to note that only after Arash assumes the life of a drug dealer and takes his first tab of ecstasy does he encounter the Girl while under the influence.

Sheila Vand as The Girl, a young woman with fangs wearing a chador in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night — Image Via Vice Films

While the Girl’s victims at first glance appear to be random passers-by unfortunate enough to be caught in her path, a closer examination of her two most prominent victims (Saeed and Arash’s father) tell a different story. The Girl first encounters Saeed early on in the film when he’s sexually humiliating one of his prostitutes, forcing her to orally pleasure him. However, only upon inviting her back to his place and snorting several lines of cocaine does she take his life (in stunning black-and-white fashion). Similarly, with Arash’s father, though far from an upstanding citizen, he remains out of her path while he’s attempting to get clean from heroin. Only whereupon he relapses and forces a prostitute to shoot up with him does the Girl intervene, feeding on him as well. In both instances, whether it’s Arash or the police, no one appears particularly alarmed when the bodies are found. There’s no mention of lacerations across the neck, bite marks, or any signs of death through a physical confrontation. The decision to refrain from commenting on what those who found their bodies saw and the lack of suspicion in regard to any vampiric activities strongly suggests that the assumption is simply that they overdosed, drawing a clear analogy between vampirism and drug addiction.

In 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' Early Signs of Addiction Take Many Forms

Further reinforcing these themes is a scene between the Girl and an onlooking child who she threatens. She doesn’t devour him and instead asks him if he’s a good boy. Once he replies that he is, she shows him her fangs and insists that she’ll come back to brutally murder him should he not grow into a good man as well. Though drugs are absent from the scene entirely, eagle-eyed observers will notice that prior to her confronting him, he’s unwrapping a piece of candy. While at first one could assume that the scene is meant to evoke sympathy with the Girl, showing that she only kills wicked men (the likes of which she finds aplenty), the fact that Amirpour likens a child’s addiction to sugar to a grown man’s addiction to cocaine or heroin transforms the scene into a clear metaphor for the prevention of drug use. The boy, an onlooker of drug users on the streets of Bad City (the fictional Iranian location that the film takes place in), needed the threat provided by the Girl in order to avoid drugs as he comes of age. From a literal perspective, it's not the Girl’s vampiric fangs that scare him, but the deaths of the people around him due to substance abuse.

Black and white image of a teenage girl smelling the neck of a teenage boy dressed s a vampire

Arash Isn't As Much in Love As He Is Addicted

This brings us finally to Arash and how his arc symbolizes the cycle of addiction and dependence, the likes of which takes the form of his blossoming love for the Girl. While beginning as a righteous and honest man, his encounters with drugs as a result of his father progressively puts him on a dark path. After having his prized sports car taken from him by Saeed (a clear consequence of drug use), he steals an expensive pair of earrings from the wealthy woman whose house he maintains. His ecstasy-fuelled encounter with the Girl is only the beginning of his decline as though he falls in love, his actions continue down a morally ambiguous road. This all culminates when after seeing his father suffering from heroin withdrawal he becomes infuriated with him, giving him drugs and money before throwing him out and relinquishing himself of the responsibility of caring for him. When Arash realizes that the Girl had something to do with his father’s death (neglecting to comment on any presumed signs a vampire feeding would leave), after a moment of contemplation he still chooses to be with her. While the film may present this as a story of love, when looking at the vampire as a metaphor for the addictive substance itself, the hidden meaning becomes crystal clear: even after watching heroin take the life of his father, Arash is now addicted.

If werewolves represent humanity’s fear of losing one’s self to their primal instincts, vampires represent humanity’s fear of sex. Nearly every instance of vampires in popular culture play on this theme of eroticism, portraying these wanderers of the night as glamorous romantics who there is an often-irresistible danger to loving. Vampires are also fundamentally drug addicts, constantly searching for their next fix of human blood and doing whatever they must in order to procure it. Within rooting her vampire story against a backdrop of substance abuse throughout a corrupted city, Amirpour brings the analogy of vampires as drug addicts to the forefront of her work, resulting in a metaphor that, while hard to miss with respect to its feminist themes, is unmistakable once revealed.