The Addiction

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The Addiction is an unconventional 1995 vampire film by Abel Ferrara, starring Lili Taylor, Edie Falco, Paul Calderon and Christopher Walken. It was written by Ferrara's regular screenwriter, Nicholas St John, filmed in black and white and released simultaneously with Ferrara's period gangster film, The Funeral.

[edit] Plot

Kathleen Conklin (Taylor), a young philosophy student at New York University, is attacked by a woman (Annabella Sciorra), who tells her "order me to go away" and, when the frightened Kathleen is unable to do so, bites her neck and drinks her blood. Kathleen develops several of the traditional symptoms of vampirism, including aversion to daylight, but the film's main focus is on her moral degradation. The film opens with a narrative of the My Lai massacre, and the vampires repeatedly resort to the strategy of blaming their victims for not being strong enough to resist them. As one of Kathleen's victims weeps incredulously over the damage, Kathleen coldly informs her: "It's not my actions but your incredulity that needs examination here." At her graduation party, she says "I'd like to share a little bit of what I've learned" and savages the neck of the nearest person, precipitating a bloody, chaotic vampire orgy. Eventually Kathleen meets Peina (Walken), who claims to have conquered his addiction and recommends that she read William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. In an ambiguous finale, Kathleen is again confronted with the woman who first bit her, but resists, receives absolution from a Catholic priest, and is shown walking away from a grave with her own name on it.

[edit] External links

• The Addiction at the Internet Movie Database
• The Addiction at the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films list