“Carmilla” (MA) and a half
HOW do you kill a vampire? Any fool knows the answer to that question. You hammer a wooden stake through its heart. Easy peasy!
For this film, writer/director Emily Harris has adapted one of the early works of vampire fiction, Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871/72 novella, antedating “Dracula” by 26 years.
The narrator is Lara (Hannah Rae), a young woman preyed upon by Carmilla, (an anagram of Mircalla, Countess Karnstein) a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist.
The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality as an antagonistic trait, leaving it subtle and relatively unmentioned. The story has often been adapted in film and other media.