All the Moons was easily one of my most anticipated films for 2021’s Fantasia Film Festival. Any movie that promises a child vampire, a poetic title, and a character-driven script will get my attention. Here, the film is a Basque-language title set in a war-ravaged country beginning in 1876. Haizea Carneros is captivating in her role as an orphan child whose nun-run convent is bombed as they pray instead of escaping to safety. With bodies all around her, a cloaked figure appears and speaks to the girl. The young girl is trapped beneath heavy concrete and likely will die as she begs for help.

When the child wakes, she is fully healed and the woman (Itziar Ituño)tells her she can no longer see the sun. They live as mother and daughter and the young girl is enamored with a life of belonging. She has a community and in a consistent thread that bridges character throughout the story, can survive by living simply.

In the dead of night, the people she lives with venture out into the woods in search of food. But the danger of being a hunter is that there are always those that will hunt you too. The 19th century was not kind to those that represented things they did not understand. Soldiers discovered where these eternal beings were hiding out and burned the ramshackle hovel to the ground.

Vampires See All The Moons

All the Moons don’t use a lot of dialogue and instead rely on visuals. Its strengths are in the stunning backdrops and, the pitch-black darkness. There is also a feeling of danger that follows this small girl around. It’s not until about two-thirds through that the smallest of the vampires is given a name. By then though she is separated from her new mother and through the strength of her convictions alone, has somehow reversed one attribute of the vampire’s kiss and can now walk in the day. After being found by a solitary man after becoming snared in a bear trap, Candido (Josean Bengoetxea) names her Amaia.

It’s a Fantasy Movie

As a study of loneliness, love, and life and death, All the Moons never bends any boundaries we have not seen before. In fact, despite the film being a spectacle of light and dark as well as, an atmosphere for days, beyond being beautiful there isn’t much meat to it. It does manage to skew the traditional ideas we already know about being a vampire but even then falls back on the tried and tested notion that being eternal isn’t all that great. What’s more, after a long and simple storyline watching Amaia wander through time, the final third lacked the finite detail of sentiment that the rest of the movie reveled in.

For those that love a romantic fantasy-filled movie with astonishingly lovely cinematography, heartbreaking relationships, and lots of quiet, All the Moons is a satisfying vampire film. However, if you’re like me and looking for something that is equal to or better than Let the Right One In, this is not it. By the same token, it is a nice vampire story.