In Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara suggested drug addicts were like vampires; here, he shows vampires in the grip of an addiction. Since Driller Killer, Ferrara has been American cinema’s most irredeemable maverick, as much for his commitment to arthouse intensity as for his willingness to be more extreme in his vision of violence an despair than anyone working in the straight horror film.
Postgraduate student Taylor is dragged into an alleyway by a well dressed 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 grabbles with philosophical and spiritual issues as evil threatens to envelop her life. Finally, after a blood-drenched graduation party, Taylor achieves a strange sort of redemption.
In a performance even stronger than her committed turn in I Shot Andy Warhol, 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 90s, The Addiction dares to tackle the personal roots of the large-scale atrocities Taylor is studying for her thesis. As haunting in its fluent verbals as in its striking black and white visuals this is one of the most challenging, unforgettable pictures of 1997. And some people will hate it a lot. You be the judge.