2023’s Parasite Lady is a cinematic poem.

Miranda (Arrielle Edwards) awakens in her coffin.  Tall with long red hair, she makes for a haunting figure as she strides across a snowy field and heads to a carnival where she finds her next victim.  Though the film is shot on video, director Chris Alexander still manages to make our real world feel like some sort of otherworldly fantasy, a vision that balances on the line between being a dream and being a nightmare.  Everything about the carnival feels off-center and off-balance.  Even the familiar rides and the posters of 21st century pop cultural icons like Captain Jack Sparrow add to the overall otherworldliness of the location.  Dracula and Sparrow, represented at the same carnival?  The past is meeting the present.

Miranda takes her victims back to a cheap motel, the type of place where everyone has probably spent at least one night.  It’s the type of motel that you see sitting off the side of the road while you’re driving and you think to yourself, “How does that place even stay open?”  But, when it’s late at night and your eyelids are feeling heavy, you’re happy to see it.  It reminded me a bit of the motel where 11 year-old me lived for a few months with my mom and my sisters.  My mom and my two eldest sisters paid for our stay by working as maids.  Me, I spent my days exploring the hallways and listening at the doors.  Every night, I would look out the window of my room and watch a movie playing at a drive-in that sat on the other side of a nearby creek.  I would make up my own stories and dialogue to go along with the images.  Who needs sound when you’ve got imagination?

Much like those drive-in movies that I watched, Parasite Lady is a bit of an enigma.  There’s very little dialogue.  The majority of the 43-minute film features a soundtrack made up of muted music and sound effects.  Instead, it’s all about the imagery.  Much like the vampire films of Jean Rollin, the film plays out like a cinematic dream.  It’s less important to understand why Miranda exists than to just accept that she does.  Why do her victims seem to be instantly drawn to her?  Well, why is anyone drawn to self-destruction?  That’s the world in which we live.  That’s also the world in which Miranda lives, though she doesn’t necessarily want to.  Parasite Lady is drenched in an atmosphere of ennui.

Earlier, I compared the film to the works of Jean Rollin.  I would also compare this film to Jess Franco’s wonderfully atmospheric Female Vampire.  The scenes of Miranda walking through the snow and the carnival bring to mind the lengthy shots of Lina Romay walking through the wilderness in Franco’s film.  Much like Female Vampire, Parasite Lady leaves one wondering if eternal life is really worth all of the angst and the suffering.  Arielle Edwards has a strong physical presence that, much like Lina Romay in Female Vampire, allows her to dominate the screen without having to speak.

Executive produced by Charles Band and released by Full Moon Pictures, Parasite Lady is an unforgettable dream of dark and disturbing things.