Brow Beat

The Director of the Greatest Iranian Vampire Western of All Time Is Back With a Dystopian Cannibal Love Story

Ana Lily Amirpour, the director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a horror Western about a vengeful, skateboard-riding vampire, is back with an equally genre-defying new movie. The Bad Batch takes place in a dystopian desert wasteland where America dumps its outcasts, criminals, and cannibals: the “bad batch.” Unlike A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Bad Batch is in color and in English, but its trailer shows that it still has the same surreal, offbeat quality as Amirpour’s directorial debut.

The film stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Diego Luna, and Jim Carrey as a virtually unrecognizable nomad who wanders the desert with a shopping cart. Amirpour has listed Romancing the Stone, The NeverEnding Story, The Princess Bride, and El Topo as the film’s influences, and where desert-set dystopic movies are concerned, there’s no escaping comparisons to the Mad Max franchise. But if her first feature is any indicator, this movie will stand all on its own.

The Bad Batch hits theaters June 23.