HABIT (director: Larry Fessenden; cast: Larry Fessenden (Sam), Meredith Snaider (Anna), Aaron Bell (Nick), Heather Woodbury(Rae), 1995)
HABIT, supposedly a vampire movie, but, perhaps, it is more like a psychological thriller/love story. In the opening scene, we see the director, writer, and star of the movie, Sam (Larry Fessenden), walking down Greenwich Village in his Halloween costume, on his way to a friend's Halloween party. He looks out of it as he stumbles along, and as he looks around in disbelief, he sees the other celebrants in their costumes, and just goes stumbling on, not quite so sure if the scary creatures he is seeing are for real or induced from his inebriated state. We learn at the party that he has a serious drinking problem. Yet he has no trouble hooking up with an uninvited guest, Anna (Meredith), with whom he is sexually attracted to; while, at the same party, his ex-girlfriend Rae (Heather) arrives late, and she appears to be upset that he pays very little attention to her.
We see that Larry is a "hip" NYC type of a person, who acts nonchalant about getting robbed on the subway. His fast-paced urban lifestyle shows that he both parties and works hard, employed as a manager in a Mexican restaurant, who just happens to be at a difficult stage of his life at the present moment, undergoing severe physical and mental changes, and is saddened by the recent death of his father, whom he keeps seeing visions of. On top of that, his live-in girlfriend, Rae, has just split from him because she found it difficult to communicate with him because of his drinking problems and she wasn't sure if he could ever commit himself to loving her.
His relationship with Anna starts off on the fast track, as she is fiercely sexual, she loves to bite into him, drawing some blood from him and sucking on it. They make love at the drop of a hat: on the roof of his building, in Battery Park, and even on his bed. But their relationship is odd, she won't tell him anything about herself, and chooses to surprise him, by showing up to meet him when he doesn't expect it, never staying with him during the day. He soon becomes violently sick after their sexual encounters, and begins having troubling visions of her, as if she were a vampire battling to suck his blood. He tries to call out for help to his ex-girlfriend and to his best friend Nick (Aaron), but they can't understand him. The one person who he probably should have contacted, whom he doesn't, is his father's intellectual friend, who leaves him a message on his answering machine telling him that he wants to talk to him about the girl (Anna) he brought to the speech he gave, honoring his father.
You feel Sam's agony of living in such a crowded city as N.Y., constantly hearing its pulsating city rhythms, experiencing its dark fears, and you are always aware of the noise and many distractions there are, especially when you need space to think. Sam is cracking up and he is scared, and though he has friends, he can't reach them. Now, whether these are psychotic attacks, or if he is being attacked by a vampire, the film only provides you with elusive answers. But one thing is certain, something bad is happening to him.
What makes this vampire type of film different than the others, is that it is very personal, more about the psychological state of a guy who doesn't seem to be a psychotic, but is very confused about the new direction his life is taking him. Most of the other films of this kind seem so unreal in regards to any kind of personal underpinnings that are frightening to them, that the fright in them appears to be from watching good filmmaking, not from something that can possibly crop up in their daily lives or invade their inner being.
Fessender has fully thought out the details of how a person can break down in front of us and not have any recourse in putting a stop to it, making the story as plausible and far-reaching as possible. There are a lot of things that happened involving relationships and inner perceptions, that you need time and peace of mind to think about, just as Sam needed, that might never make sense. But that isn't the point... it is usually the things that don't make sense, that bother us the most. The film has a captivating style and playful mood to it, that keeps you involved in the intelligently told story, which is rare for this genre.
REVIEWED ON 10/3/98 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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