Lucy's (Sophia Woodward) life seems to have lost all its gloss: Living in a small town in the middle of Nowhere, USA, she's caught between working in a dead end job at her father Abe's (Steve Kennevan) garage and married life with Jonathan (Sam Garles) that has grown mighty stale. The only bit of excitement is offered by Arthur (Matthew Lloyd Wilcox), a mechanic at her father's, who's very open about wanting to have an affair with her and always one step away from forcing himself onto her ... but even though she feels flattered by his rather crude attempts, she's too timid to give in to him. But then she starts to have dreams about a mysterious woman (Barbara Eugenia), and even if they're diffuse at first, she's sure they're nightmares. And then Arthur disappears - and all he finds in his trailer is a drawing of that particular mysterious woman. That Arthur was really taken by her Lucy learns only later that night, when she gets lost in the woods and crosses paths with her ... to find out she's a vampire - and sure enough, she bites Lucy as well. From now on, Lucy shows weird symptoms, and nobody knows what to make of it - only Lucy has a definite idea, and she doesn't like it one bit ...

One of the more unusual vampire films out there of late, Lilith's Awakening is deliberately slow-moving and very unexcited in its direction and camerawork, putting its focus on atmosphere rather than spectacle, and remaining intentionally vague about many of its details to add to a feeling of unease rather than try and explain everything away - and all of this results in a film that's properly creepy, that might give you bad dreams not despite but because it doesn't feature any blood baths and genre-immanent thrills. It's really a mood piece first and foremost - and is excellent at that due to its pace but also its well-composed (mostly but not exclusively black and white) imagery and fitting use of sound, coupled with strong performances and moody locations.

Totally worth a watch!

2 pieces of trivia: Director Monica Demes was mentored by David Lynch herself and Lilith's Awakening was her thesis project for the David Lynch MFA Program - but Lynch's influence shines through only inasmuch as this is a rather unusual movie.

And all the names of the characters are taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula - without this being a Dracula movie of course ...

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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