Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1601 in VHS
• Released on: 1997-03-18
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

From The New Yorker
Abel Ferrara has made some interestingly lousy movies ("King of New York," "Bad Lieutenant"); this one is just plain lousy. Another black-and-white vampire film with a female bloodsucker (Lili Taylor-wasted, in more ways than one), it wants to be a sombre thesis on the banality of evil, and brings in My Lai, Nazi atrocities, and junkie night life to illustrate its points. The dialogue, filled with academic buzzwords and solemn proclamations, is too staid and dreary to be laughable. The actors, including Annabella Sciorra and Christopher Walken, are posed beautifully for maximum noir effect, in lacy shadows and dark alleys (the picture was shot in the neighborhood of New York University), but the blood has been drained out of their performances. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Movie About Sin Nature
I really enjoyed this movie. It's set in a very intellectual environment, with a dark side. When the main character becomes bitten by a vampire she gets pulled into the life of a vampire, a very addicted one. She's addicted to the life-style of a vampire but hates it. The movie is about her struggle with her sinfull life-style.
It's not a movie comparing vampirism to aids and drugs so much, but rather to human sin nature. Sin nature as presented in the movie though, is as addictive as drugs and contagious and incurable as aids. The movie did an excellent job of displaying the nature of sin to the audience. Notice first that the sin had to be chosen, victims were never forced. After they chose sin, they became addicted and couldn't, by their own means, be released from their addicted lifestyle. In this movie, it's not until you are saved can you finally find release from sin. Her nature had to be changed, not her environment, not her psyche. I think the theme of the movie is embodied in the quote from R.C. Sproul(A famous calvinist minister and speaker) at the end of the film, "We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners." It was a movie about human nature, and the anatomy of sin the Biblical idea of sin (intended or not). Vampire stories in general are a study of sin. Concider their hate for all things Christian, the love of death and destruction, their opposite lifestyle(sleeping upside down, night dwellers ect) So I found this movie a great one to add to the list of vampire movies that I love!
I highly recomend this movie. You'll have a lot of fun examining it and picking out the details that hold the secrets to the overall meaning of the film. Very philosophical!

"Everything We Are Is Eternally With Us"
"One aspect of determinism is manifested in the fact that the unsaved don't recognize the sin in their lives; they're unconscious of it. They don't suffer pangs of conscience because they don't recognize evil exists. This is because they're all predestined to Hell and therefore never brought to the Light of metanoia{conversion}...so when considering the salvatory aspects of facing guilt, suffering is a good thing. We should all hope to feel guilty, to feel pain, so we can seek pardon and ultimately freedom. Guilt is a sign that god is working out your destiny, and it's a foolish person who refuses to acknowledge this."

The above quote is taken from the film, and is given by Kathleen's[Lili Taylor]philosophy professor, alluding to the thematic framework for Abel Ferrara's powerful and allegoric tale of redemption vis-a-vis existentialism meets vampirism ...similar to how Jim Jarmusch incorporated existentialism and mysticism into the western genre with his brilliant "Dead Man"[also filmed in black and white.]

"The Addiction" is quite unique, not your average horror movie. Don't be fooled by the ridiculous looking video box cover{no DVD available}. I'd seen it many years ago and stumbled on it again as IFC aired it late Halloween night. It's stark, grim, futile, very 'human'...the story need be in order to propell Kathleen toward the possibility of salvation. As most people aren't inclined to examine the metaphysical and philosophic elements of existence, the film may be substantively lost on many viewers who won't be bothered with a movie that requires thinking and feeling outside of the usual pedestrian horror movie cliches. The focus here is soul sickness, redemption and Christian iconography, much like Ferrara's wrenching "Bad Lieutenant."

Taylor gives a pained performance as an ordinary college student coming to terms with the vast array of evil deeds carried out by mankind. This is framed within her academic studies{philosophy, examining war atrocities}, but when she is violently attacked{yet chosen/accepted}while walking home one night, reality forces her from detached, speculative positions on evil into the burdensome gravity of facing that which is a very real aspect of humanity. You fear for her yet are fearful of her, and the nature of her addiction remains elusive.

In one scene, Kathleen seduces a fellow student in a library, coaxes her back to her apartment in order to feed. The distraught girl stands sobbing in front of the bathroom mirror, applying a bandage to her neck as Kathleen coldly sizes her up.

Her victim pleads "don't you care what you did to me! doesn't it affect you?" She replies, "Why didn't you tell me to leave, to get lost like you really meant it? My indifference is not the concern here; it's your astonishment that needs studying."

In another scene, Kathleen, checking herself over in the mirror before going out, thinks to herself, "is it wrong for me to draw blood? No. It's the violence of my will over theirs."

There's similar dialogue throughout, examining attitudes of moral ambivalence and apathy toward evil, even our species' desire for it. At the story's conclusion, Kathleen, now hospitalized after a heinous binge feeding, is confronted by the woman who initially attacked her, or, who she oddly submitted to. She symbolizes a quasi devil-on-your-shoulder attempting to justify evil, moral indifference and will to power just before the pastor arrives to give Kathleen her "last rites."

"Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challanges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, the blackest darkness to a hidden light." ~ C.G.Jung

Given the realistic griminess and overall bluntness of the film, it concludes with a rather lyrical and moving scene of redemption and salvation, haunted by Kathleen's voice-over ..."To face what we are in the end, we stand before the Light, and our true nature is revealed; self-revelation is annihilation of self."

You'll watch it more than once
The Addiction is an artsy vampire movie that strays from what most movie goers see in vampire films. It is shot entirely in black and white-which adds to the dark setting. Vampirism is portrayed in much the same way as drug addiction here.

Lili Taylor turns in an excellent performance as Kathleen, a philosophy student who is plunged into the dark world of the vampire. As she is transformed gradually in the movie the fact that she is a philosophy student plays a large role. She is forced to reconcile her new life with the existentialism that is the focus of her studies. As she becomes more sure of herself in her new life, an elder vampire Peina (played by the creepy Christopher Walken) throws a wrench in the works. Lili Taylor's voice is marvelous in the dark settings where her character contemplates her new existence with philosophy. Where will her journey into darkness take her...?

This movie is well written, visually appealing, and the main charcters are deep. You will want to watch it more than once to be sure.