ADDICTION, THE (director: Abel Ferrara; cast: Lili Taylor (Kathleen Conklin), Edie Falco (Jean), Christopher Walken (Peina), Paul Caldaron (Professor), Kathryn Erbe (Anthropology Student), Annabella Sciorra (Casanova), Robert Castle (Priest), 1995)
An N.Y.U. philosophy doctoral candidate, Kathleen Conklin (Lili), gets her doctorate despite being bitten in the neck by a vampire (Sciorra) and becoming one herself, when pulled into an alley after attending a lecture on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
This handsomely shot b/w film, relates vampyrism to the evil that is inherent in man, that becomes his addiction. Vampires are compared to junkies who need their fix.The film brings out a collection of philosophers to state its case; such as, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In the background, we hear funky rap music and witness the action on the mean streets of Greenwich Village.
The film makes use of the 24-hour around the clock slide show the Holocaust Museum in NYC features, to interject from time-to-time, the evil of the Nazis depicted in those slides. This was a mistake. You are comparing apples with oranges, and the film suffers with its credibility from such an unjust comparison. In case Ferrara forgot, vampires are not real but the Holocaust was only too real.
The film itself, does not feature much action, relying on a lot of chatter and non-communicative conversations to get its story across. There is one mass bloodsucking scene at the film's climax, as Kathy invites all her college mentors and personal acquaintances over to help her celebrate her attaining of a doctoral degree with a reception. She thanks them for coming, and then says, `I'd like to take a minute to share with you a little of what I've learned while studying for my doctorate.' Then she pounces on one of her professors, sucks out a mouthful of blood, and spits it out at the crowd. Now that's what we were waiting for, since the film did not feel quite right up to that point. It felt better being more campy.
Despite the short-comings of the plot, Lili Taylor gives a credible performance. She is especially good in the scene where she is pulling out her own molar to prove a philosophical point. She is the best thing about the film, playing a vampire addict who just wants her fix.
This thinking man's vampire movie, is a natural for the midnight cult audience, but will seem out of place in a prime time slot. Christopher Walken is a natural for this type of film, but has a part that might as well be nonexistent. We don't see him until the film is nearly over, and when we do see him, he doesn't do much, except drain the blood of the still-not-evolved vampire, Kathy.
One of the many problems with this low-budgeter, is that it couldn't tell its story without the philosophers. It needs their explanations to explain itself. The story, which could have been more interesting if developed properly, never has a chance to really express itself without being explained away in philosophical terms. All its weird subjects are brazenly brought up and we are teased with the weight of their meaning, and then we are stopped short from following through on what their implications are. For instance, the topic of free will, always a good philosophical one; but, when Kathy says it is now my will against theirs, we are not quite sure what she means by that. When she confronts her next chosen victim and is ready to vamp them, she asks them to look her in the face and tell her, convincingly, to let go. But what does that mean. Unless this is a blatant call against pacifism, saying we have to get ready to kick ass whenever we are set-upon.
The film's theme becomes, that existence itself is the search for relief from our habits, and existence is the only relief we can find from our habits that makes sense. What Kathy learns from her vampire guru, Peina (Walken), not her college prof, is that we are all evil: we must annihilate the self. So the question becomes, what should we do, if we can't kill what is dead...You will do anything for a fix, says Kathy. An addiction is an evil thing to have. And if you are faced with choosing you or them, jumping or being pushed, Kathy still believes that you must satisfy your own needs first. Or, you can do with as little as you possibly can, says the diet-conscious and wise vampire, Peina.
If you want to see a film that is more credible than this one, that handles the same subject, but injects more life and fear into its story, and less philosophy and guilt-ridden religious themes, check out Larry Fessenden's Habit.
REVIEWED ON 5/30/99 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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