2025 Another Hole in the Head Film Festival Coverage
Carmilla Vive! review
Vampire goddess vs. internet trolls
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Carmilla Vive!
Directed by Jeff Harder
Written by Bea Cabera, Stephanie Eberle, Serina Flores, Jeff Harder and Eliza Marley
Starring Aiszah Marie Rangel, Isaly Viana, Meghan Flood, Lex Turner, Johnny Kalita, Andrew Thorp and Kalika Redman
Carmilla Vive! Review
I don’t know much about the novel Carmilla. Basically…I know that it was written before Dracula and was a lesbian vampire story. But I could also be wrong because…I don’t know much about the novel Carmilla. I know equally little about the 2015 movie Carmilla from director Jeff Harder…director of Carmilla Vive! It would stand to reason that this is a sequel of sorts…though they appear to have recast the titular character. A brief write-up that accompanied the film included the plot of the 2015 film and explained that Carmilla Vive! is more of a reimagining than a sequel. Which is good…because, again, I know equally little about the 2015 movie.
I do know about Carmilla Vive! It’s kind of a prerequisite for reviewing it. The story positions the titular character as a singer in Chicago. Over the course of the black and white film…we learn that Carmilla (Isaly Viana) isn’t just a vampire. She’s a goddess with seemingly limitless powers. She also has a complicated relationship history. Legend tells that Carmilla isn’t the best girlfriend in the world. But she really wants to make a go of it with Laura (Aiszah Marie Rangael) after spotting her at a bar during a gig.
Laura’s friends are a bit apprehensive about the whole situation. They uncover dark things about Carmilla’s past…including that she is a powerful goddess. To her credit, Carmilla has already come clean about this with Laura. What, at first, sounds ridiculous…becomes clear when Laura is shown how powerful her new love interest is. From then on…she’s on board. And, it turns out, she has a problem that a powerful goddess can help her with. Namely, a group of internet trolls.
Yeah…it looks weird written out like that. Goddess vs. internet troll isn’t the first plot I’d have thought of in a lesbian vampire movie. Calling them internet trolls hardly seems accurate even though that’s how Camilla Vive! describes them. These are almost cartoonish bad men. They publicly threaten violence and abuse towards Laura and her friends. They also troll them on the internet…so the description is more leaving things out than it is completely inaccurate.
What’s weird about Carmilla Vive! is that it doesn’t really play this goddess vs. internet troll for laughs. There’s something comedic about it…but it doesn’t really go for the obvious jokes very often. It does do a bit where the ancient goddess can’t figure out who she needs to deal with behind anonymous screen names…but that’s about it. Instead, the men are really horrible people whose internet trolling is selling them short. They’re dangerous and violent and, again, cartoonish about it.
Mostly…Carmilla wants to build a new world, and she wants Laura beside her. Most importantly, she wants Laura to choose to be beside her. Things turn a bit apocalyptic the deeper you dig into what Carmilla envisions for the future of the world. Carmilla Vive! generally keeps things fairly breezy in contrast. Though there are end of the world questions surrounding Carmilla…Laura and her friends discuss them as they would any questionable girlfriend choice. That’s pretty funny actually…as are some random flying body parts when Carmilla finally manages to get her hands on those trolls. Maybe Carmilla Vive! is funnier than I give it credit for.
There are plenty of interesting things going on in Carmilla Vive! Enough to keep you engaged while the story unfolds. At a short 70 minutes, Carmilla Vive! is definitely worth taking a bite out of. Even if you aren’t going to end up making an eternal commitment.
Scare Value
There are some interesting ideas in Carmilla Vive! I can’t speak to exactly how it is riffing on the source material, but I can say that it delivers a pretty entertaining movie. There are some oddities in how it presents some cosmic concepts while managing to still feel extremely low stakes. A goddess wasting their time and power on internet trolls is an oddly compelling choice though. Even if those trolls are incredibly two dimensional and over-the-top being so.
