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Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula kickstarted the popularity of the modern conception of the “vampire”, they have always been an instrument for metaphor. Whether it’s a story underpinned by explorations of sexuality, gender roles, immigration, disease/plague, or religion, the author always poses a deeper question, interpreted through the lens of the creature’s story. Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction is an intoxicating entry in the vampire canon. It is filled to the brim with anxious and grim throughlines about, you guessed it, addiction.
As much as I love horror movies that are all shock and awe, I’ll never scoff at one that takes its time, wears its anxieties on its sleeve, and isn’t afraid to take detours down weird, academic tangents on power, religion, and addiction. A slow-burn horror movie with broad philosophical themes and underpinnings is essentially evergreen. Even decades after its release, even after rewatch after rewatch, the film stays intellectually relevant and refreshing. On my latest watch, it brought to mind my recent revisit of Saint Maud, with its quiet, ominous dance toward destruction and its intensely foregrounded concepts.
While the main memo of this film is the vampire’s curse interpreted as a pain and pleasure cycle of addiction and sin, it’s also completely anchored to the reality that Ferrara, his crew, and their community in New York was experiencing at that time. There is a sort of hallucinatory and rambling quality to the way these anxieties are excised and expressed: flashes and allusions of the AIDS crisis, failed, brutal wars and horrific acts of violence. The painful disease of drug addiction is as in your face as it gets in the text, but nonetheless completely effective and moving. The Addiction functions as a train of consciousness reflection on power and destruction as much as a vampire genre movie. These ideas are so intrinsically intertwined and in-conversation, though, that it doesn’t ever feel like any idea thrown at the wall is half-baked or secondary.
Ferrara and the scriptwriter, Nicholas St. John, immediately transcribe the questions the film is interested in exploring. Kathleen (Lili Taylor, The Conjuring), is a student working toward her Master’s degree, watching a presentation about a massacre during the Vietnam war, questioning the lack of consequences for those who enable people to commit such acts. Soon after, while walking down a dark street at night, she is bitten by a beautiful, mysterious woman. She tells Kathleen to tell her to go away, not request, a play on the typical rule-based architecture of the folklore. Instead of being punished and victimized for allowing a vampire to come in, she is being taken due to a lack of concrete refusal. After biting her neck, the woman, with such an ambiguous tone, calls her a “collaborator.” She is not framed as a victim, but a newly-inducted member with the power to change those different from her.
Endlessly gorgeous black-and-white cinematography from frequent Ferrara collaborator Ken Kelsch (Bad Lieutenant, Driller Killer) fills the screen from the jump. It is unbelievably beautiful. A mix of purposefully constructed and immaculately curated shadow work runs parallel with on-location filming on NYC streets. This combo of skilled camera work and clear aesthetic vision, with an unfeigned entrenchment in the real-world shooting environment, is a transcendent blend.
Ferrara mentions in the Arrow 4K commentary track, “There ain’t no fuckin’ extras. This is the street. You think I’m directing these people? We shoot in the street, bro…You think we’re casting these people? This is fuckin’ New York.” One of the best aspects of Ferrara’s work is the rawness constantly emanating through the screen. The film was made over 23 days on location at NYU and Greenwich Village, and that is so apparent in the best way.
There is a loose and authentic identity woven here, between the lack of extras and the images of historical atrocities spliced throughout. The movie is always grimey, but also really introspective in a way that feels so singular. There are always huge questions being posed, questioned, and examined, and it’s both technical and rough on the edges at the same time.
Even with so much it’s grappling with, with so many philosophical questions on its mind simultaneously, Ferrara makes plenty of space for dark and disturbing scenes of horror. “It’s the violence of my will against theirs,” Katherine says to herself early on after turning, and that’s the ethos of the violence on display. It is always Katherine stealing the blood of another through her violent will. Even the first scene of Kathleen obtaining blood, which isn’t explosive or physically destructive to the victim, is shot with gorgeous German expressionist flair, and feels so harrowing, even being so subdued. The film is remarkably patient, always.
The way Ferrara ramps up the violence Kathleen wields is an incredible journey. Her first few acts of violence are essentially off-screen until we reach the film’s tipping point as she bites, in a fully visceral sequence, a man she met on the street. She fully and unapologetically gives in to her bloodlust. Shortly after, when she meets Peina (Christopher Walken), an older vampire who has more violent willpower and a bigger superiority complex than her, she reaches an apex of addiction. Her leechlike and vicious turn here becomes so disturbing and dark–she truly becomes a dictator and sharer of violence.
This is a slow-burn of dense and crushing atmosphere, one that explodes with rage in the third act. It is completely harrowing–the natural endpoint of this lust being indulged. The Addiction is remarkably layered, which is why it works so well. Ferrara and St. John have a few excellent outings, and they always have this gorgeous combo of raw passion and rage, with clearly discussed grander ideas that are always being probed.
The Addiction is excellent; I always wanted it to keep going down different philosophical and narrative routes. The style is stunning, the performances are electric, the descent is harrowing. Vampire movies will keep serving as vessels for metaphorical examinations, but none will be as quiet as The Addiction. It makes you wonder, and it makes you wince.
The Addiction is now streaming free on Plex.
Categorized:Editorials