Carmilla

About

Carmilla is a web series and about a college student's investigation into her missing roommate and her mysterious new one, Carmilla, based on an 1871 novel by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

History

Novel

Carmilla was first written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu for serialized publication in literay magazine The Dark Blue between 1871 and 1872.^[1] It is widely considered one of the earliest works of vampire fiction.

Web Series

The Carmilla webseries premiered on August 19th, 2014 on the YouTube ^[2] channel KindaTV. The episode introduces audiences to Laura Hollis (Elise Bauman). The show follows Laura from the perspective of her webcam as she investigates her roommate's disappearance of her roomate and her mysterious new roommate, Carmilla, a vampire. The first episode (shown below) received more than 2.3 millions views as of October 2017.

The show ran for three seasons, airing more than 100 episodes.

The Carmilla Movie

On September 2nd, 2017, KindaTV published the teaser trailer for The Carmilla Movie, a feature-length followup to the web series set five years later. Within two months, the teaser (shown below, left) received more than 450,000 views.

KindaTV published the official trailer for The Carmilla Movie on October 5th, 2017, garnering more than 194,000 views in less than one month.

The film premiered for a one-night theatrical run in Canada on October 26th, 2017 and was made available for digial download shortly after.^[3]

Reception

After the film's release, Vox^[4] called the movie "Frustrating." However, they did praise the film for giving fans what they wanted, including more lavishly staged production of the main characters' romance. They write:

"This premise serves as the central plot conceit, ostensibly for the purpose of allowing Carmilla to make peace with her past but really so that The Carmilla Movie can put its heroines in corsets and stage elaborate Victorian set pieces -- think less Dracula, more DeviantArt photo shoot."

"The new movie is squarely aimed at existing fans -- which means lots of gloriously queer fan service
[…] If nothing else, The Carmilla Movie will satisfy those looking for a happy, charming gay romance."

Fandom

On July 7th, 2014, the Carmilla Series Twitter ^[5] account launched. As of October 2017, it has garnered more than 66,000 followers.

Since launching in August 2014, the KindaTV YouTube^[6] channel has received more than 220,000 subscribers.

On October 25th, 2014, Redditor ^[10] absentislands created the /r/CarmillaTheSeries subreddit. Three years later, it has garnered more than 800 subscribers.

On October 16th, 2016, YouTuber^[9] MMalik_93 posted a supercut of all of Carmilla and Laura's kisses. The post (shown below) received more than 5 million views.

On Tumblr, ^[7] the series has significant popularity as fans share gifs of their favorite moments. On October 26th, 2017, Tumblr^[8] user wolfwars posted a series of images from The Carmilla Movie of the Carmilla attempting to bite Laura. The post (shown below) received more than 2,000 notes in less than 24 hours.

The series has also inspired a wealth of fan art, most of which features the characters Laura and Carmilla in love, kissing or holding each other (examples below). The series and the art surrounding it has been celebrated by lgbtq+ fan communities for its positive portrayal of the characters' relationship.

Search Interest

External References