Series · Love will have its sacrifices
Laura Hollis, a newly enrolled college student at Silas University, shares a room with Betty, who mysteriously disappears all of a sudden. Little does Laura know that after this fateful night, nothing will be the same in her life, starting with meeting her new roommate from hell, Carmilla Karnstein. "Carmilla" is a single-camera, scripted transmedia series that puts a modern spin on the cult classic Gothic vampire novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. It's a story of a young woman’s susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire.
Episodes
Laura Hollis, new college student at Silas University in picturesque Styria, Austria, is working on a journalism project documenting the weirdness of her new school. Convinced by her roommate Betty Spielsdorf to go to a party, she takes one night off - only to find a slimy note near her bed the next morning that says Betty is no longer attending the school.
Since nobody saw anything at the party or even seems to care that Betty is missing, and after endless calls with officials from Silas University to investigate her disappearance, Laura decides to take matters in her own hands and searches for her roommate by herself. Until - another roommate shows up.
As it turns out after 3 days, Betty is nowhere to be found on campus, and the girl who burst into Laura's room and introduced herself as Carmilla is in fact her new roommate - from hell. Seeking some kind of little revenge, Laura decides to get back at her and pours Carmilla's soy milk on her breakfast cereals - she really shouldn't have done that.
Laura meets up with her floor don Lola Perry and Perry's friend S. LaFontaine to discuss the freaky blood that poured out of Carmilla's milk container. Ultimately, she wants to get rid of her - and Perry tries to assure her that Betty will probably return soon, like all the other girls that went missing before.
Laura is eager to interview the two girls that went missing before and then re-appeared and asks Perry to arrange a meeting. Enter Carmilla, who explains that the blood was a prank - sure! Enter Sarah-Jane and Natalie, who report that they can't remember anything about the time they went missing except for some creepy dreams beforehand.
Getting into a heavy argument with Carmilla about how rude she was to the two girls and about her efforts to shed light onto Betty's disappearance in general, Laura makes a bold decision and puts her whole research online. Next thing you know, a loud alarm goes off.
Recounting the dramatic and fishy events from the dreaded Town Hall meeting, at which The Dean warned students to spread rumors about missing girls online, Laura finds a co-investigator in her Lit TA, Danny Lawrence, who is also concerned about what's happening on campus. Shortly after Danny leaves, someone knocks on Laura's door.
Charming safety escorts Wilson Kirsch and Will Luce, two members of the Zeta Omega Mu fraternity, came to Laura's rescue and protection. While they - kind of - overstayed their welcome, entering Carmilla isn't amused to meet them in her room and bites them out, literally.
Laura is very happy about her many new online followers and teams up with Danny to find similarities between the four girls and the circumstances of them gone missing and re-appearing - all while Carmilla is being snarky. Is the alchemy club behind all this? Let's ask Natalie again.
Irritated by Natalie's and Sarah-Jane's weird change in behavior, Laura facebook-stalks Betty and discovers that her missing roommate wasn't the real Betty, so to speak. Even more shocking - Carmilla makes her a cup of Laura's (!) cocoa and wanders off, missing a special guest who asks for Miss Karnstein.
Behind closed door, Laura, Perry and LaFontaine secretly listen to The Dean repremanding Carmilla. Laura's initial schadenfreude vanishes when they're alone and Carmilla seems very upset - they bond until Danny enters the room with the news that the alchemy club made photos of every party a girl disappeared. And there's one more surprise!
Apparently, Laura has to step up her surveillance a notch because Carmilla suspiciously shows up in party photos with Sarah-Jane, Natalie and studdy buddy Elsie right before they went missing. It seems that she can count on both Danny and Kirsch to protect her from evil at day - but can they protect her from these disturbing dreams she's having lately?
When Laura mentions to Carmilla her continuing bad dreams, her roomy initially mocks her about it - until she shows some compassion and, in a very flirtatious way, offers her a creepy charm in the form of a dried bat wing on a bracelet that might help her sleep better. Did the same happen to Natalie and all the other girls before they disappeared?
Laura and LaFontaine decide to crash a Faculty Club meeting in order to present evidence to The Dean that Carmilla is evil. When they get thrown out, Laura is able to grab a photo from the wall that shows Carmilla in 1954. To investigate further, they hit the library - and the library hits back! At the end, LaFontaine speaks out what finally had to be said.
LaFontaine's revelation came as a late surprise without warning to Laura, but suddenly the behavior of her roomy did make a lot of sense to her. Question is, what do you do with a vampire as your roommate who gives you seduction eyes and tries to lure you in? Considering to play the bait might not be the best idea, or does it?
The "Scoobies" are still trying to figure out how to lure Carmilla into a trap with Laura as the bait, when Kirsch, Will, Sarah-Jane and Natalie show up to invite her to a party. Recruiting their help for her plan, Laura goes to bed and wakes up from another bad dream, only to find Carmilla in a very nostalgic mood. Laura takes the opportunity to invite her to the party.
The night of the party, Laura is hopeful that their plan will work and that they can capture Carmilla in the crowd - until she suddenly shows up with a bottle of expensive champagne to celebrate with her bait in private in their room. The tension between them is rising - but they won't be alone for long.
It didn't quite work as planned - nevertheless, Carmilla is bound to a chair, with tape on her mouth, not able to move and do any harm. Which begs the question: Who kidnapped Natalie from the party, and why did Sarah-Jane fell out of the window into her death, screaming? The group needs answers from Carmilla, they better remove the tape.
Laura, Danny, LaFontaine and Perry are still scratching their heads and try to figure out how to get more information out of Carmilla when Perry inadvertently gives Laura a brilliant, albeit very cruel, idea. At the low of her blood level, still reluctant, Carmilla finally decides to tell her side of the story.
Carmilla tells Laura her story of becoming and "living" as a vampire, with Laura suddenly deciding to pep it up by playing along with sock puppets. Which, at first, works delightfully when it's all about adventures centuries ago. Alas, it ends sadly when Carmilla's real love was struck by tragedy, and she began to disobey her "mother", who Laura already met.
In the light of what she revealed to Laura about her "life" and her "mother", The Dean, Laura and the gang go back and forth on what to do about Carmilla and keeping her hostage? It gets much more complicated when a visitor shows up in their room and tries to shake up the status quo - oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
A panicking Laura tries to talk herself down after being bitten by Carmilla, just seconds after Will ran off, just seconds after Carmilla punched him in the face, and just seconds after she learned that he was also a vampire. When Carmilla comes back from following Will, she is about to run from her "mother", The Dean. Can Laura convince her to stay?
The next day, and after most likely failing her midterm lit test, Laura gets an explanation of how Carmilla's charm works - the bracelet charm, that is. Shortly after, LaFontaine and Perry show up, and the two roomies get into a heavy argument about how to fight their common evil enemy, The Dean. Enter, Danny!
When Danny enters the room, she immediately gets into a fight with Carmilla to save and protect Laura - which doesn't end very well for her. Something that Laura can't stand is when someone is too overprotective - so they break off their tentative relationship. But that's not the biggest earth-shattering thing that happened on campus ...
Giant Mushrooms! Apparently, something went definitely wrong in a lab on campus, and in the aftermath of all that crazyness, Laura, LaFontaine and Perry have to deal with what the test results from the fluid found in Sarah-Jane and Natalie's room revealed: Brain Parasites! If only Carmilla could help ...
Freaked out about all the crazyness and wanting to get some normalcy, Perry gets into an argument with LaFontaine and leaves the room. At night, Laura wakes from a scary dream, in which a girl in a nightdress warns her to not go into the hungry light. Is it Carmilla's ex lover Ell? Another dangerous research trip to the ominous library is inevitable.
Laura, LaFontaine and Carmilla return from the library with an old Sumerian book and a new very old friend, J-P Armitage, a junior records clerk from 1874 whose consciousness was sucked into the library catalogue and who now exists digitally on a flash drive. While Carmilla helps to translate the contents of the book, Perry comes looking for LaFontaine.
Perry is devastated and blames herself for LaFontaine taken hostage by some evil vampire minions. Carmilla reassures Laura that nothing that happened is her fault - and they figure out that they have to warn Kirsch about his bro Will being a vampire. After he left, the roomies take some time for a crushing waltz á la mode of 1698.
In the very early morning, Laura and Carmilla are woken up by Perry who devoured her time to cleaning and making brownies to calm herself down about LaFontaine's disappearance. When they hit the Sumerien book, and accidentally spill some blood on it, they discover a hidden scripture about the demonic hungry light, Lophiiformes. Enter LaFontaine!
Despite LaFontaine remembering nothing, Laura, Carmilla and Perry try to piece together what might have happened and why? Unexpectedly, LaFontaine's phone audio recorded a portion of the course of the events, and they can figure out that this is all part of an ancient cultish ritual in honour of Lophiiformes, scheduled for the new moon next Friday.
Laura tries to get an extension on her term paper by asking Danny - but that doesn't end very well. Meanwhile, Carmilla and J-P find out that they have to secure the Blade of Hastur, a weapon that's powerful enough to destroy the evil on the campus once and for all. However, the evil is right onto them, or, more precisely, right into Laura.
Possessed by The Dean via an evil necklace, Carmilla's "mother" shows up embodied in Laura, striking to make a deal with her "daughter" about not threatening the cultish sacrifice under any circumstances. While she's at it, she destroys the flash drive on which J-P was saved, and let Will take Kirsch hostage as the last victim instead of Laura herself.
Realizing that she's run out of options and not knowing about the deal between Carmilla and The Dean, Laura decides to appeal to the student body at a school event - and learns that tomatoes can fly and nobody will hear her out. Even worse, she discovers a huge video file on her computer that reveals some harsh truth about her roomy.
Laura's kind of emotional meltdown is stopped when she realizes that they could use LaFontaine's urge to join the party - a.k.a. the ritual - by letting her go and following her into the decisive battle. Gathering the troops, she hopes that Carmilla will fight on her side - with unpredictable outcome for all of them.
Something very unexpected happened: Laura and the gang won! They won the battle against The Dean and the evil hungry light, saving the 3 missing girls Betty, Natalie and Elsie, as well as LaFontaine and Kirsch, who all got rid of the brain parasites when the light was struck by a giant black cat: Carmilla. Sadly, Laura's beloved roomy didn't make it ...
After the dust of the battle settled, Laura is recording for her journalism project one last time to talk about the aftermath, including the return of her formerly lost roommate Betty, strange tremors that occur from time to time on the campus, the fortunate discovery of JP's backup - until Perry storms into her room to announce a surprising visitor ...
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