“Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person”, a Canadian French language film which was released as “I’ll Be a Very Creative Humanist Vampire” in South Korea a few weeks ago, is as amusing as suggested by its absurd title while also being surprisingly sweet at times. Mainly revolving around one young vampire girl’s personal struggle and following accidental romance, the movie dryly swings back and forth between humor and sincerity, and you will not probably mind several dark obligatory moments of sucking some human blood.

The early part of the film establishes how its heroine became a bit more sensitive than her vampire family members. Probably because of the personal trauma from what happened at her private birthday party many years ago, Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is not so willing to kill people for blood in contrast to her vampire families, and that naturally makes her into a big burden for them during next several decades. Despite hungry for blood as usual, she still refuses to kill even after growing old enough for trying to suck blood for herself, and that surely causes more headache for her parents.

However, Sasha comes to find a possible solution at one night not long after her cousin tries to push her more toward killing and then sucking blood. She comes across a notice on the support group for the depressed or suicidal, and she instantly goes to their meeting because she may feel less guilty about killing someone already inclined to kill oneself.

And that is where she comes across Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), a high school boy who previously encountered Sasha when he tried to commit suicide a few days ago. As frequently bullied by his schoolmates, Paul sees no reason to go on even though he has a caring mother who is unfortunately unavailable at times due to her busy hospital work, and he is not so afraid at all even when Sasha later tells more about her and her plan to kill him for blood.

Ironically, Sasha only comes to care more about Paul as he gets to know her. He remains suicidal as usual, but her vampire fangs still cannot come out due to her growing affection and compassion toward him, so she ends up spending more time with him as helping him feel a bit better. He wants to have some payback moments before his planned death, and she gladly assists him while still feeling conflicted about whether she can actually kill him in the end.

What follows next is a series of humorous scenes where Sasha and Paul come to bond more with each other via their little nocturnal adventure. As getting his revenge on several people who harassed him in one way or another, Paul finds himself becoming a bit livelier than before, and he and Sasha come to recognize more of how lonely they are. While Paul remains ready for getting bitten by her, Sasha hesitates more than before, and that surely makes their situation more complicated.

Of course, this is quite familiar to anyone who watched a number of vampire romance films including those Twilight flicks or more sophisticated ones such as “Let the Right One In” (2008) or “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (2014), but the screenplay by director Ariane Louis-Seize and her co-writer Christine Doyon does its own things while taking its time for more humor and character development. Despite her inherent dark nature, Sasha’s private space is filled with a number of colorful stuffs, and there is a lovely scene where the camera simply observes how she connects more with Paul as showing more of herself to him. At one point, she even tries a bit of music for expressing more of her feelings in front of him, and that is one of the sweetest moments in the film.

It surely helps that the two lead performers of the film carry their movie with nice low-key chemistry. Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard ably complement each other via their characters’ contrasting personalities, and Montpetit does a solid job of balancing her vampire character well around comedy, horror, and pathos. On the opposite, Bénard is equally engaging as filling his role with enough sympathy and sensitivity, and we come to care more about him just like his accidental vampire girlfriend.

The movie could take more time on developing several supporting characters around the story, but the supporting performers fill their rather thin roles with enough personality at least. As Sasha’s more active cousin, Noémie O’Farrell has some fun with her character’s ruthless aspects, and that is why it is a bit surprising to see when her character shows some compassion to Sasha later in the story. As several other family members of Sasha, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, and Marie Brassard are also effective, and their characters come to us as rather likable persons despite their unspeakable nature. Yes, these vampires do kill people for blood, but they are also fairly nice and decent in addition to being very principled about their vampirism at least.

On the whole, “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person”, which is also known as “Humanist Vampire Too Sensitive to Kill”, is a little but charming genre piece to cherish, and Louis-Seize makes a commendable feature film debut here after making several short films. Although this is essentially one-joke comedy movie, it has enough mood, style, and personality to justify its rather short running time (91 minutes), and it will be interesting to see what may come next from its director in the future.