Best Geeky Finds – A New Bite of an Old Classic

Blog-BGFTwilight – sparkly vampires and werewolves + Nightvale = Carmilla

This seems like a strange pop culture equation for a YouTube series based on a 17th century short story collection (especially one that includes Twilight, but don’t worry, it’s not very much like that, so you won’t want to kill any characters yourself), but the common supernatural tropes concerning vampires Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu created in a pre-Dracula world have survived for centuries in horror and supernatural fiction and film.

In the newest interpretation of Le Fanu’s story and characters, Carmilla, Laura Hollis (Elise Bauman) finds her party-going roommate at Sillas University has vanished, replaced with a slimy note containing multiple choice answers for her whereabouts (“d: cited personal reasons, and really, why does anybody do anything?”). In her place arrives a loud, strange, messy girl who keeps blood in soy milk containers. The roommate, Carmilla (Natasha Negovanlis), is a nuisance, but when other students on campus go missing, along with mysterious old campus photos containing Carmilla’s likeness, Laura and her friends LaFontaine and Lola (Kaitlyn Alexander & Annie Briggs) begin to suspect this new roommate may be a vampire.

Spoiler alert: she is one. Double spoiler: she might be in love with Laura.

I know what you’re thinking: “You said it wasn’t very much like Twilight.” Well, there is plenty of romance, but not until the second season. Before this there is plenty of supernatural, vampire hunting, giant fish gods, and a family of vampires with their own agenda running the college.

Carmilla is directed in a similar fashion to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (check out my previous blog on this), showing all actions from a desk via laptop webcam. By narrowing the backdrop, gory, action packed scenes are left to the imagination of viewers as scenes jump from battle-ready to battle-won and bandaging characters. Despite this lack of viewable action, the storyline keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, and has made me seek out the original French vampire stories. If you’re looking for a new take of another old classic, Carmilla is worth watching.

Check out the first episode on YouTube.

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