LILITH'S AWAKENING. (2016) INSPIRED BY BRAM STOKER'S 'DRACULA.' WRITTEN, DIRECTED, PRODUCED AND EDITED BY MONICA DEMES. STARRING SOPHIA WOODWARD, BARBARA EUGENIA, SAM GARLES, STEVE KENNEVAN, MATTHEW LLOYD WILCOX, EDEN WEST AND RACHEL WENDELL. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I thoroughly enjoyed this modern-day vampire flick. It was directed by a beautiful Brazilian woman who was mentored throughout the process by no less a personage than acclaimed film-maker David Lynch. Her name is Monica Demes (I've a distinct feeling we'll be hearing more from her) and, if her photo online is anything to go by, she's a knockout. With fabulous long hair and a gorgeous face, she's as far from the typical stereotype of the cranky middle-aged male director as it's possible to get.
LILITH'S AWAKENING is Ms. Demes's first ever feature film. It was in fact an animated short film of hers called HALLOWEEN that first attracted the attention of David Lynch. This led to Ms. Demes's gaining entry onto the prestigious DAVID LYNCH MFA PROGRAM and turning LILITH'S AWAKENING into the first completed feature-length movie to come out of the programme. Hmmm, beautiful and talented, eh? Don't you just hate her already? Haha, only kidding.
This horror art film, which has already been awarded a slew of honours from the IOWA MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION (where the film was made), will debut at the DANCES WITH FILMS movie festival in Hollywood on 11th June 2016. Just in case any of you horror fans feel like jetting over...!
I'm afraid my own personal budget doesn't allow for even occasional jaunts over to Tinseltown but some of you guys might be secret millionaires for all I know and if you are, you now know where it's all happening on June 11th, thanks to moi...! In the meantime, let's have a quick look at what's going on vis-à-vis the plot of LILITH'S AWAKENING.
Monica Demes really knows and loves her DRACULA, which I appreciate. All her characters are named after people in Bram Stoker's iconic horror novel from 1897. Lucy Harker is a bored, lonely young woman who's trapped in every way that a woman can be trapped.
She's stuck in a marriage from which the passion has long since flown out the window. Her hubby Jonathan sports a hipster beard (yes, we have that problem over here in Ireland, too...!) and has all the personality of a watermelon. I chose that particular fruit because it's the nothing-est of all fruits, if you get me. Lucy works for her father, Abe Helsing(!), in his dreary old service station. Frankly, if I were Lucy, I'd be so depressed I'd never get out of bed.
On the bright side, a cute guy from Lucy's dead-end job has a thing for her. I mean a stalker-level type of thing. After an incredibly sexy kissing scene between the pair in Lucy's car this guy, who's called Arthur Holmwood, invites her to a late-night rendezvous in an old abandoned train shack. Classy, eh...? Lucy doesn't go, but don't worry. Arthur's not left hanging...
He meets instead the woman who's been turning up lately in Lucy's dreams and maybe even in the spooky BLAIR WITCH-style woods out back of her house. Arthur tells this beautiful but enigmatic woman that, if she likes, things can get 'really rough' between them. That's a joke. And why is it a joke? Because the laugh's on him, that's why...
LILITH'S AWAKENING kind of turns the whole vampire thing on its head by presenting us with a drop-dead-sexy female protagonist for a change. That's right, folks, we've got ourselves a lady vampire with a guitar and a smouldering presence that's so powerful it'd tease the knickers off a cadaver at forty paces.
Brazilian singing sensation Barbara Eugenia plays Lilith, whose sudden appearance in the repressed and unhappy Lucy's life is no accident. Lucy's already aware of her feelings of disappointment with herself, her husband and her job. Can her sexual awakening and the long-overdue unveiling of her true nature be far behind...?
This is one director who's not afraid to let the camera linger lovingly on the actors' faces for longer than normal. Some of the images in the film are too gorgeous not to mention. There's a deserted love-seat gently swinging in the breeze; a magnificent owl starkly silhouetted against the night sky; lots and lots of lovely bats and clouds scudding across the moon on a black, windy night.
The film is deliciously artistic and filmed mostly in black-and-white, but we're shown bright-red
blood on pure white sheets in a shocking contrast, the way Steven Spielberg gave us the little girl in the red coat in his otherwise black-and-white film SCHINDLERS' LIST.
LILITH'S AWAKENING is a triumph of a movie for a first-time director and I'd advise any fans of horror, and the vampire genre in particular, to see it when it becomes available. Even if you can't quite make the Hollywood debut due to being stony-broke and all the way across the Atlantic like me, the release of DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatnot is never too far away these days. Thank God, haha.
I'll leave you with my favourite quote from the movie. A freaked-out Lucy tells her irritated husband about the strange woman who haunts her thoughts:
I'll leave you with my favourite quote from the movie. A freaked-out Lucy tells her irritated husband about the strange woman who haunts her thoughts:
'I saw her in my dreams, and now she's coming for me. If I go into the woods, I might never come back.'
They say that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. In this case, I'd say that 'they' were wrong. Quite, quite wrong...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
This is an intriguing addition to the vampire sub-genre and well -worth seeing. My own review calls it "a visually stunning work...full of haunting imagery and ambivalent possibilities". Drop in for a read.
ReplyDeletethanks! Will have a wee look at your review! thanks for comment
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