A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the most audacious vampire film since Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of Nosferatu. Its portrait of the fiendish creature is commendably minimalist. Sheila Vand, who plays the titular character, is merely dressed in a black chador. The attire conjures cultural perceptions of repression and mourning. However, director Ana Lily Amirpour turns this simple item of clothing into a terrifying reminder of the vampire’s visage. It called to mind the minimalism of John Carpenter’s Halloween. That film took an everyday mask and turned it into a face that became the picture’s convincing thesis of supernatural evil.