The Addiction

1995's THE ADDICTION has been on my radar since a few years after its original release, despite my somewhat cool reactions to director Abel Ferrera's other films.  I've always dug low budget black and white films that try to get all atmospheric, especially ones shot in that most cinematic of places, New York City.  Ferrara especially knows how to capture the anxiousness of its streets, a place that is perfectly natural for a horror film.  While allegories and metaphors can be concluded from this film, it is indeed a bona-fide terror thriller type thing.  And surprisingly scary at times.

I could say something cheesy and cliched like "watch this movie alone, in the dark to get the best effect."  Lots of folks say that about lots of movies.  Here, it's so apt.  Additionally because loneliness is such a looming theme in this story.  It almost seems heretical to watch this film with an audience.

Kathleen (Lily Taylor) is a shy philosophy grad. student at NYU.   Expectedly, her speech is peppered with quotes from Nietzche and Sartre.  She is greatly disturbed by the documentary films of genocide she sees in class, though her outrage is centered on how only one person could be charged with a war crime that claimed so many lives.   One night a woman on the street attacks Kathleen by biting her neck.  A vampire.  Kathleen spends the night confused and tearful, wondering if she is infected.  The doctors rule this out.  But something is happening to her.  The usual things like aversion to sunlight, but also, to her, a sort of clarity.  And an insatiable desire to feed.

There are fresh victims all around.  Her classmates.  Her professor.  That guy at the deli who always propositions her.  There are never enough of them.  Before she drinks their blood they wonder of her new behavior, more assertive and verbose.  Kathleen now says things like "My indifference is not the concern here. It's your astonishment that needs studying" and "Essence is revealed through praxis. The philosopher's words, his ideas, his actions, cannot be separated from his value, his meaning.  That's what it's all about, isn't it? Our impact on other egos."

My favorite is her voice-over during a pan of the University library: "Oh, the stench here is worse than a charnel house.  This is a graveyard.  Rows of crumbling tombstones.  Vicious libelous epitaphs.  And we're drawn here like flies".  It may also be my top moment in THE ADDICTION.  What an insightful description of the introverts' haven.  This scene is some kind of supernatural correlate to the one in WINGS OF DESIRE.

And Christopher Walken turns up as another vampire named Peina, who dispenses advice about managing vampire life.  His performance and dialogue are everything a fan could hope for.  Is he a dark angel? The Devil? He's part of an impressive cast that also includes Edie Falco, Kathryn Erbe, and Michael Imperioli. 

THE ADDICTION makes a strong case for a drug addiction allegory, with at least one close up of a syringe being used to extract the blood of a victim.  For me, Ferrara's film gave plenty more evidence of a theological play, of man's depravity and sin itself, which is referenced by name repeatedly.  The final scenes really confirm this for me, with Reverend Robert Castle, a real life Harlem minister and cousin of Jonathan Demme, playing a large part.  I stated in an earlier review that Ferrara has "more Catholic hang ups than Scorsese", but here the themes of sin and redemption are more reverent, less cartoonish, than in the director's other films.

And Ferrara's direction and Ken Kelsch's photography really create a spooky, often uncomfortable experience.  Skillful on all fronts.  Maybe Abel should do more of this genre.  The climax - a graduation party - won't soon be forgotten.