Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Abel Ferrara's The Addiction made its way into theatres in the United States on October 6, 1995, five weeks after the release of Michael Almereyda's Nadja. Both are black and white films about female vampires navigating in the urban wasteland of New York City. But use vampirism as metaphors for just about everything besides, well, supernatural creatures with fangs sucking the blood from innocents. Both featured casts of indie-stalwarts. And both made tiny blips on the art house circuit (neither made it to even $500,000 in US gross) and both are totally off the radar of most mainstream horror fans. Put simply: In its matinee show on Friday Blade 2 made more than either of these so-called vampire movies. Both have much to recommend them on an intellectual level, but neither is the least bit satisfying purely as a horror film and both are seriously flawed as artistic drama. So it's fitting that I'm gonna try to get my reviews for both films out on the same day. And it's even more fitting that that day will hopefully be Halloween. Because if you're looking for a great scary movie, I'm planning on recommending two to skip. Hope that made sense.

Anyway, pity the foolish vampire who bit Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor) a philosophy doctoral student at the University of New York (Hey, isn't that the fake school that Felicity went to when NYU wouldn't let them use their name?). Oh yes, Casanova (Annabella Sciorra) should feel really bad about bit of undead reproduction. Because it's one thing to create a brainless zombie servant of the night, but it's another thing entirely to create a smart zombie servant of the night who insists on brainlessly spewing philosophy pell-mell as if the entire study of great thought boils down to five or six dead men each of whom was responsible for a nugget of wisdom that could be printed on a cocktail napkin. Because heaven knows that's all I got out this this movie. Philosophy students might find deeper meaning, but as somebody who's only moderately Philosophy-Aware, the nattering started rolling off my back very early and by the end of the movie there was a big puddle of pretentiousness on the floor next to me. Your ability to absorb may vary.

The Addiction begins with a philosophy class watching footage from the war atrocities in Mai Lai...

[ACTUALLY, The Addiction begins with the words "Russell Simmons Presents...." And that just makes me laugh, because from what I can tell, the founder of Def Jam records is involved with this movie because Jamel "Redrum" Simmons has a "blink and you'll miss him getting killed" part in the movie. And I think Jamel is Russell's nephew or something. And, well, Abel Ferrara needs all the help he can get getting movies financed, so you can totally understand why he would have given "Redrum," a talent-free actor and an only slightly more talented rapper, a part in this movie. But it makes me laugh that "Russell Simmons Presents" this movie.]

But as I was saying, the movie begins with Kathleen watching this graphic footage of the evil that men do. Then, she walks through the gritty streets of New York City, by dealers and hustler and pimps and sees a different variation on the evil that men do. Then she gets dragged into an alleyway by the aforementioned vampire sire. But, because philosophy is central here, she's given a choice. She has free will. The vampire says that if Kathleen *tells* her to leave (none of this asking, begging, or pleading stuff), she'll go. But Kathleen can't. And she gets noshed on just a bit. And as she leaves, the vampire declares Kathleen to be a collaborator.

Well, next thing you know, Kathleen is on her bed, sweating and tossing and turning. The film ain't subtle about the fact that she's like a junkie and she's got the hunger. But in case you think that Ferrara is only using vampirism as a metaphor for addiction, Kathleen goes the the campus doctor, where she's assured it isn't AIDS and the doctor just blames anemia. Moron. As if all diseases of the blood were the same. And Kathleen flees the infirmary.

Despite occasional bouts of puking blood and increased difficulty with the sun, Kathleen is able to return to classes, because, on another metaphorical level, being a vampire isn't all that different from being a graduate student. I know this one for a fact. You sleep irregular hours. You eat badly. You spend too much time in dark crypts that some people call libraries. And nobody notices if you start getting really pale and tired looking. Plus, you occasionally get to feed on undergraduates.

But anyway, the film returns to its "evil that men do" theme briefly as Kathleen and her friend Jean (Edie Falco) go to an exhibit on Nazi atrocities at a local gallery. But then returning to the "vampire as addict" metaphor, the hunger gets to be too great for Kathleen and soon she's out drawing blood from local homeless men and then injecting herself with the blood in her bathroom. Again, this ain't subtle stuff.

But even this approach isn't enough for her and soon she starts munching on whomever she can find. She chows down on one of her professors. I suspect it's because he mispronounced both Nietzche and Sartre. She eats an anthropology student. I suspect it's because she made the mistake of quoting that "Man is the measure of all things." But Kathleen knows better. She knows better than all of them.

Except for an older and wiser vampire played by Christopher Walker. He appears when the film is more than half over and disappears within five minutes, but Walken is always a welcome presence even if he mostly lectures Kathleen on her weakness. He has, he explains, learned how to eat, work, and defecate in the human world and he hasn't felt the need to feed on human blood in 40 years. He's not exactly a recovered addict, but he's a man with a lot of self-control.

But soon after chatting with Walken, Kathleen is back on the streets devouring the weak whenever the chance pops up, culminating in a feeding frenzy at her graduation party before an ending that throws everything before somewhat into question. If you still care by then.

The Addiction is frankly much less fun than what you'd expect from the director of Driller Killer and King of New York (though probably much more coherent then you might expect from the director of New Rose Hotel). Ferrara is a director who thrives on bringing a kind of visual poetry to the grittiest parts of New York City and in that respect he totally succeeds. Kathleen navigates through a New York full of rundown streets and violence where, under normal circumstances, she would be a likely victim. But after she's bitten, she becomes the predator, the ruler of the streets. Ferrara enjoys the possibilities of this reversal where Kathleen can go from cowering at the threat of the African-American youths who hang out and rap down the street from her apartment, to sexually taunting them and finally inflicting violence. She would normally fear rape, but now she has the power.

Shot by Ferrara's somewhat regular cinematographer Ken Kelsch (who somehow missed out on the fun of King of New York), The Addiction mixes a near-documentary realism with the stylized light-and-shadow possibilities of the film stock. The moments leading up to attacks general involve elongated shadows stretching across pavement or brick walls. When Kathleen is first attacked, she's dragged under a fire-escape, where the shadows of the meshing play across hers and her attacker's faces. It's quite stunning. And what horror director hasn't fantasized about the inhuman blackness of blood in this monochromatic environment. Great stuff.

And for Lili Taylor, this part is a great showcase because Nicholas St. John's script tries to cover so much darned ground. Taylor gets to go from regular geeky student, to junkie, to zombie, to a blood and sex starved vampire, to a more serious junkie in the space of 82 minutes of screen time. I've never been a huge Lili Taylor fan, to be honest (except for Say Anything, of course). But here, she carries the film well. Sure, there's no actual story arc for her to play, but she's clearly having more fun than the rest of the cast. The generally marvelous Falco is stuck playing the buttoned-down grad student, Taylor's disapproving friend. Pretty one note. Ferrara regular Paul Calderon strikes the proper pompous notes as Taylor's professor. And if you blink you'll miss Falco's Sopranos co-star Michael Imperioli as a religious pamphleteer.

Actually, beyond Taylor and Falco, most of the big parts are actually miniscule. Both Walken and Sciorra have their names above the title, but that's professional courtesy more than anything. Walken has five minutes of screen-time and Sciorra doesn't have more than a dozen lines of dialogue. She's fine and while Walken's character speaks highly of his rediscovered humanity, this is the least lively performance he's given for Ferrara.

Mostly The Addiction sinks under its general lack of focus. In the aforementioned 82 minutes, The Addiction tries to fit in drugs, sex, and religion and their links to vampirism while still giving an Intro to Philosophy lecture. St. John's script just never knows what it wants to be, so it bops back and forth and does none of its ideas justice. Had it chosen a single philosophical direction to pursue, it might have been provocative. Or had it gone deeper with the drug metaphor, it might have been provocative. It's all just too frantically nebulous for my tastes.

Like Nadja, The Addiction gets my not-so-coveted honor of a three star rating, but no recommendation. It's a little bit gory, but the only time its disturbing is when it shows the Holocaust and Mai Lai imagery. And that's a cheat. Hopefully, though, vampires will learn their lesson from this film — if you don't want your lifestyle overanalyzed, don't eat philosophy students.


Recommended: No

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