A Bite of Refinement
Emily Harris’s Carmilla (2019) is not your average vampire film — it’s what happens when gothic horror graduates from blood and bats to emotional constipation and candlelit tension. It’s lush, slow, and charged with a sensuality that’s more whispered than screamed.
Based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 novella — the mother of all vampire tales that came before Dracula put on his cape — Harris reimagines Carmilla with the precision of a watchmaker and the emotional patience of a therapist specializing in repression. The result? A film that’s equal parts haunting and hypnotic, with a side of slow-burn lesbian panic.
The Plot: Hormones in a Haunted Greenhouse
Our story unfolds in a countryside mansion so isolated it makes The Shining’s Overlook Hotel look like a social hub. Lara (Hannah Rae), a lonely young woman, lives under the suffocating care of her father and the even more suffocating supervision of her governess, Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine, playing repressed rage like it’s an Olympic sport).
Lara’s life consists of embroidery, staring out windows, and repressing every human emotion. Enter Carmilla (Devrim Lingnau), a mysterious young woman rescued after a carriage crash nearby. She’s pale, beautiful, possibly dying, and definitely flirting with death — and Lara.
What begins as curiosity turns into a charged intimacy. Carmilla’s presence awakens something in Lara: longing, rebellion, and possibly vampirism. But to Miss Fontaine, who sees sin in everything that isn’t Bible-approved, Carmilla is less houseguest and more harbinger of moral decay. Cue the slow collapse of decorum and a rising sense that the real horror here isn’t bloodlust — it’s Victorian manners.
Atmosphere: If Gothic Could Blush
Harris’s direction is painterly. Every frame looks like it could hang in a museum titled “Women Having Feelings in the 19th Century.” The lighting glows like candle wax melting over bone; the colors shift between damp green forests and feverish amber interiors.
It’s all so visually rich you can practically feel the moss growing on your skin. And yet, beneath that beauty, there’s an unease — the kind that seeps into your bones rather than jumps out from behind a curtain.
The setting is so quiet you start hearing your own breathing. The air hums with tension, like a love letter sealed with a knife. The house is both sanctuary and prison, and Harris uses its claustrophobic stillness to trap you in Lara’s head — where curiosity and fear share the same bed.
Performances: The Power of a Stare
Hannah Rae’s Lara is a marvel of restrained awkwardness — the kind of girl who’d probably apologize to a vampire for bleeding too loudly. You can see her longing flicker like candlelight every time Carmilla’s near. Rae captures that intoxicating confusion of youth — when affection, desire, and guilt swirl together like an emotional fog.
Devrim Lingnau’s Carmilla, by contrast, is all confidence and mischief — a creature of appetite wrapped in silk. She’s part predator, part poet, and fully aware that every glance she gives Lara could start a scandal or a spiritual awakening.
Jessica Raine’s Miss Fontaine deserves her own horror movie. She’s terrifying not because she’s evil, but because she’s human — consumed by righteousness, fear, and jealousy. Her entire moral worldview unravels in slow motion, and watching it happen is both tragic and deeply satisfying.
And then there’s Tobias Menzies as the doctor, whose main hobby seems to be diagnosing hysteria and being profoundly useless — the 19th-century male specialty.
The Themes: Blood, Desire, and Repression (Mostly Repression)
At its heart, Carmilla isn’t about vampires. It’s about the horror of isolation, the cost of control, and the danger of denying what you want. The supernatural element is secondary — it’s the vessel for something far scarier: female agency.
In a world where girls are taught to pray, obey, and never feel too much, Carmilla’s arrival is both liberation and curse. She’s not just a vampire — she’s temptation itself, the embodiment of everything Lara’s been forbidden to imagine.
The film cleverly flips the usual vampire narrative. Here, blood isn’t just life — it’s emotion. When Carmilla feeds, it’s not about hunger; it’s about intimacy. The act becomes sensual, almost sacred. If Dracula is about domination, Carmillais about awakening — which is to say, both women get more character development than Edward Cullen did in five movies.
The Pace: Slow Burn, Emphasis on Slow
Let’s be honest: Carmilla moves at the speed of emotional repression. It’s not a film for viewers who need constant action. It’s for those who enjoy watching glances stretch into minutes and silences become battlefields.
Every moment feels deliberate — sometimes painfully so. But that’s the point. Harris doesn’t rush because her characters can’t. They’re trapped by societal expectation, their own desires, and the suffocating politeness of 18th-century etiquette.
If you’re expecting fangs, flying coffins, or a CGI blood orgy, look elsewhere. This is horror of the quiet kind — the kind that whispers instead of screams. It’s like watching someone pour tea over a ticking time bomb.
The Humor: Gothic, But Make It Awkward
There’s a sly dark humor lurking beneath the lace and piety. Much of it comes from how absurdly fragile everyone’s moral compass is. At one point, you half-expect Miss Fontaine to burst into flames just because someone made eye contact for too long.
The film revels in the ridiculousness of repression — the way everyone pretends not to notice that two women are practically making out via glances. The dialogue often tiptoes around desire with the delicacy of a cat walking on glass, and it’s deliciously funny if you lean into it.
Bloodletting, but Make It Tasteful
When the horror finally arrives, it’s handled with elegance — no jump scares, no gore, just creeping dread. A drop of blood here, a fainting spell there, and a lingering question of whether Carmilla is truly supernatural or just a symbol of everything society fears.
Emily Harris isn’t interested in proving whether vampires exist. She’s interested in how people react when they think they do — especially when those fears are tied to love, sexuality, and control.
And in that sense, Carmilla is terrifying — not because of fangs, but because of familiarity. The real monsters are the ones telling you not to feel.
Style Over Speed — and Proud of It
From a technical standpoint, Carmilla is immaculate. The cinematography is sumptuous, the costumes are divine, and the sound design could make a whisper feel like thunder. Even the stillness carries weight — like a heartbeat under silk.
Emily Harris’s debut feels confident, meticulous, and unashamedly sensual. You can sense her control in every frame — much like Miss Fontaine’s control over Lara, except Harris makes repression look good.
Final Thoughts: A Quiet Scream Beneath the Corset
Carmilla is not for everyone. It’s a slow, sensual, beautifully suffocating film that rewards patience and punishes TikTok-length attention spans. It’s part ghost story, part queer awakening, part feminist critique — and all atmosphere.
Think of it as a gothic terrarium: small, self-contained, but teeming with strange, forbidden life.
So, if you’re in the mood for something elegant, erotic, and existentially uncomfortable — the cinematic equivalent of sipping red wine while someone reads you forbidden poetry — Carmilla delivers.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 fainting governesses.
Because sometimes, horror doesn’t need jump scares — it just needs a repressed woman, a mysterious stranger, and a little blood on the bedsheets.
