The Addiction (1995) Arrow Player Review

The Addiction (1995) Arrow Player Review

Shot on the streets of New York, like so many of his major works – including THE DRILLER KILLER, Ms. 45 and BAD LIEUTENANT – and beautifully filmed in black and white, THE ADDICTION sees filmmaker Abel Ferrara on his own terms. With a brand new 4K restoration from the original camera negative by Arrow Video, don’t miss this on ARROW in December.

The mid-nineties were a fertile period for the vampire movie. Big-name stars such as Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy flocked to genre, as did high-calibre filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, veterans Wes Craven and John Landis, independents Michael Almereyda and Jeffrey Arsenault, and up-and-comers Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro. Amid the fangs and crucifixes, Abel Ferrara reunited with his KING OF NEW YORK star Christopher Walken for The Addiction, a distinctly personal take on creatures of the night.

Philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor, THE CONJURING) is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra, THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE) and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realises this isn’t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood…

Buoyed up by exquisite black-and-white cinematography and topped off by a tour-de-force lead performance from the always dependable Lili Taylor, Abel Ferrara’s THE ADDICTION has been variously interpreted as an allegory for AIDS, social and economic panic as well as being a religious redemption tale. The director has stated that latter is in part true, and Ferrara eases that subtext into a story that uses vampires’ bloodlust as a parallel to his previous addiction to heroin.

Ferrara’s idea is that there are no victims with addiction, and that the user/prey knows the risks and yet still want to become addicted. It’s an interesting take however THE ADDICTION’s philosophical leanings, tying in both AIDS and the Holocaust into its narrative, often feels like a push too far using imagery that feels both in questionable taste and exploitive.

The Addiction is available on ARROW and on Limited Edition 4K from 9th December.