An Iranian-western thriller with the title A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) automatically puts an image into your mind. Most audiences don’t perceive Iranian culture as overwhelmingly positive towards women. The horror/thriller genre operates in kind, frequently subjugating women as prey to some evil. Before the audience sees the film’s first frame, that title instantly ignites a question: “Okay, so what happens to her?”

We then get a film not about what happens to a girl who walks home alone at night, but what happens to those who cross her path during that walk. Pimps and drug dealers find justice. Young boys get a firm and terrifying lesson in female respect. A hooker gets a life lesson. We’re conditioned by traditional horror titles and premises to assume some sort of tragedy is going to befall the girl, and instead discover she’s the terror.

The girl does, of course, have one thing happen to her that is found equally unexpected from the implications of the genre and title - she finds love.