 |
||||
|
The Addiction [1995] In Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara suggested drug addicts were like vampires; here, he turns it round and shows vampires who are in the grip of an addiction. Since his debut feature, the much-maligned The Driller Killer, Ferrara has been American cinema's most unredeemable maverick, as much for his commitment to an unfashionable arthouse intensity as for his willingness to be more extreme in his vision of violence and despair than anyone working in the straight horror film. Post-graduate student Lili Taylor is dragged into an alleyway by a well-dressed Annabella Sciorra and bitten; she survives, but finds herself a junkie for human blood. She battens on others in a weirdly ethical way [always giving victims a chance to tell her to go away] and grapples with philosophical and spiritual issues as evil threatens to envelop her life. In a startling cameo, Christopher Walken shows up as a vampire who has gotten straight and advises Taylor to read the existentialists in order to overcome her need for blood. Finally, after a blood-drenched graduation party, Taylor follows the Bad Lieutenant by achieving some strange sort of redemption. In a performance even stronger than her committed turn in I
Shot Andy Warhol, Lili Taylor takes more risks than any other
leading lady in recent memory, delivering a profoundly moving and subtly
frightening study of a victim who turns predator. Perhaps the most seriously-intended
horror film of the 1990s [though it has some sly NYC wit], The
Addiction dares to tackle the personal roots of the large-scale
atrocities Taylor is studying for her thesis. More controlled than many
of Ferrara's films, as haunting in its fluent verbals as in its striking
black-and-white visuals, this is one of the most challenging, unforgettable
pictures of the year. And some people are going to hate it a lot. You
be the judge. First Published In: Empire November 1997 p.139 [UK] Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
|
||||