The Addiction

Lili Taylor plays Kathleen, a philosophy student at New York University who is fascinated, repelled and obsessed with genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. One evening she is attacked in an alley by a woman (Annabella Sciorra). When Kathleen awakes from her ordeal she discovers that she has now developed a thirst for human blood and must come to terms with being a vampire in a modern city. This deeply unsettling horror film is a troubling study in evil and human nature. The stark black and white photography assists in creating an ethereal world in which the the terrors of the supernatural are at times indistinguishable from the terrors of everyday life; or for that matter from the disturbing post-war images in the documentaries that so obsess the main character. Since his early “B-grade” genre films in the early 1980s, Ferrara has committed himself to developing a uniquely personal American independent cinema which is unafraid of tackling some of the most crucial philosophical and spiritual concerns of the age. Reflecting a tortuous relationship to both his Catholicism and his love of the Hollywood genre, Ferrara’s films involve characters immersed in darkly amoral worlds. Kathleen’s ethical and political attempts to counter evil are constantly undermined by her very body and instincts which propel her towards savagery and violence. Ferrara’s assured direction means that “The Addiction” works effectively as a horror film but its real power arises from daring to address the combative relationship between rationality and instinct in the human psyche. Cast also includes Christopher Walken.