If a stranger approached you and requested that you follow him to a cemetery to discover your supposed birthright, just about any level-headed individual would reject such an offer and choose to prioritise their safety in such a clearly dangerous situation. However, this is not the case for Buffy Summers, who sets aside her hesitations very fast when being presented with the opportunity to discover life’s purpose, something that entirely dismantles her entire understanding of her seemingly ordinary, humdrum life. This is the core premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the film that predated the television show that would become one of the most iconic franchises of the past quarter-century, and the root of many individuals’ first flirtations with the horror genre, as well as leaving the kind of generation-spanning legacy that we very rarely see in terms of how many people found themselves united by their love for a show. Written by Joss Whedon, who would go on to mastermind the eventual show (which ran for several years, and remains a cult favourite decades later), and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, who takes a gamble on this absurd premise written by a lesser-known screenwriter whose wholehearted commitment to this material is nothing if not entirely aspirational as far as manifesting a career from a very simple concept. The film has many qualities that draw us in and keep us wholeheartedly engaged, with the unique sense of humour and Whedon’s distinct penchant for the absurd and uncanny making for a terrific comedy that may not always reach the impossible heights that it establishes for itself at the outset, but which nonetheless is still very much worth our time, even when it doesn’t quite hit all the necessary targets in an order that makes sense or leaves us entirely satisfied.

The exact impetus for Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be pieced together by various moments in which Whedon reflects on the ideas that drew him to this material, and it was clearly a labour of love to take a risk on a premise that sounds absurd at a cursory glance, but has such incredible sincerity lingering beneath the surface, its impossible to not be entirely enamoured by the majority of its ideas. The particular approach is what makes it so memorable, with the film essentially being a coming-of-age comedy in the vein of John Hughes and Amy Heckerling (both of whom being clear inspirations on this film, albeit from a more abstract point of view), just featuring murderous, bloodthirsty vampires wreaking havoc on a small California town, leading to a confrontation between the mortals and the living dead, both of whom are intent on asserting dominance. It’s a premise that needed the right approach to fully realize all of these ideas, and while Kuzui was slightly untested as a filmmaker (her film Tokyo Pop has its devotees, but it has always been more indicative of niche circles of cult admirers more than being considered an absolute masterpiece on its own merits), she does have the vision to combine a teen-based comedy in which the titular character is fighting to keep herself afloat through the various challenges she encounters in high school, coupled with a perpetual sense of danger that comes when she realizes her purpose in life, which is exactly as the title of the film suggests – she is tasked with hunting down vampires and annihilating them to protect her community, and the entire world by extension. Offbeat and very funny, it’s not difficult to see why Buffy the Vampire Slayer would go on to spur decades of supporters, although the film that inspired it is not always discussed as pioneering many of these fundamental ideas that make it such an intriguing concept.

While Sarah Michelle Gellar will forever be the first person we associate with the character of Buffy Summers, she was far from the pioneer of the role, which was first handed to Kirsty Swanson at the very peak of her fame. Understandably, if we divide the film and the series into two distinct entities defined by tone, intention and style, it’s not difficult to see where the performances differ, and precisely why the actors took two wildly different swings in terms of interpretation the character. Swanson is the perfect candidate for this offbeat, consistently funny approach to the character – her Buffy is vapid, slightly annoying and not particularly valiant, plunged into a situation where she is only fighting for the sake of saving herself, rather than for some greater good, one of the many conversations that the film ultimately doesn’t get time to explore. Swanson is very good, but this is a typical coming-of-age comedy in which the protagonist is just an audience surrogate, with the rest of the cast being the main attraction. Donald Sutherland delivers one of his most peculiar performances to date as the “watcher’ who informs Buffy of her birthright, while the villains are played by the always deliciously maniacal Rutger Hauer, and the immediately iconic Paul Reubens, in one of the rare instances where he set out to play against type to the point where he is actually unrecognizable, making us wish that he wasn’t always bound by Pee-Wee Herman and could have kickstarted a career renaissance as a character actor. The cast is solid and always entertaining, and the film certainly knows how to use all of them creatively – but whether or not this was enough to compensate for its shortcomings remains to be seen.

Sadly, while it has some good components – particularly in terms of its conceptual foundation – Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn’t entirely succeed in what it wanted to achieve, which is not a flaw on the part of either Whedon (who had previously worked as a script doctor, this being his first official screenplay of his own that made it through to the production stage), nor Kuzui, since both of them are doing what they can to dodge the constant stream of cliches that came about through evoking these genres and reworking their foundations to be reflective of something much more profound. There is something so wonderfully enthusiastic about how this film navigates its subject matter, but this doesn’t preclude it from occasionally feeling slightly too unwieldy in terms of the themes that it was aiming to explore. At its core, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a film that aims high but doesn’t necessarily have the right artistic equipment to see all those ideas through. There is some confusion in terms of the genre – the film bounces between irreverent dark comedy and quite bleak, somewhat artificial horror, and while they are not mutually exclusive by any means, there are certain elements of both that make us feel slightly less engaged, which is a product of a film that doesn’t always know how to navigate most of its ideas, choosing instead to develop itself as a more quiet meditation on identity and the process of getting older, while not necessarily taking the time to flesh out some of its more complex ideas. The core of this film is to be a multifaceted work of genre storytelling, but it falls short by the simple virtue of not knowing exactly what it wanted to be, which may not entirely derail it, but does prevent it from achieving greatness for the past part, which is slightly disappointing but ultimately understandable given the constraints with which everyone was working.

This film is a far cry from the television show, in which Whedon and a variety of other exceptional artists truly managed to do a great service to this premise, fleshing out all of its ideas over several years, rather than compressing them into a single 85-minute film that cannot possibly hope to reach such heights. Yet, at the very foundation of this film are some terrific ideas, pieced together elegantly and with enough humour to compensate for some of its shortcomings, none of which are notable enough to diminish the fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a wickedly entertaining film that knows how to keep us consistently engaged and interested in the events that follow. Its difficult to look at this film as anything more than a creative dress rehearsal for the show (which some may argue was the entire purpose of the project, with this film just being an opportunity for Whedon to see how audiences reacted to its premise, and allowed him to iron out any kinks and test the waters as far as tonal elements go), but it doesn’t distract from its charm, a lot of which is slightly more offbeat and unconventional, but which nonetheless earns our absolute respect, and gives us a genuinely lovable horror comedy that manages to take quite an absurd premise and develop it into something quite special, enough for us to understand exactly why this film eventually flourished into one of the most astonishing artistic endeavours of the past thirty years.