The Addiction

A black and white vampire film set in New York. Kathleen is doing a doctorate in philosophy. Her thesis is on war crimes and collective responsibility. Walking home one evening, a woman pulls her into a basement in the street and bites her. The next day the sun is unbearable, food will not go down and a need begins. Kathleen keeps studying; she reads philosophy in the library and hunts at the same time. The comparison is plain: addiction. The character wants blood but the film speaks about it in the language of drugs; in one scene she uses a needle. The second line is the texts she reads. She asks her victims philosophical questions and nobody can answer. What the film argues is that evil is not an accident but a person's own choice, made knowingly. In one section she meets an older vampire named Peina. He has held himself back for years and tells her that it is possible but that the price is heavy. Lili Taylor plays Kathleen and Christopher Walken plays Peina. Annabella Sciorra is in the cast. Abel Ferrara directed and Nicholas St. John wrote it. The black and white photography and the low budget work in the film's favour; the street scenes are almost documentary. An interesting production for anyone who likes philosophical horror and independent New York cinema. For a viewer expecting a classic vampire narrative, the film leaves nearly all of the genre's patterns outside.