The Addiction Details

This New Wave tale is Abel Ferrara's most idiosyncratic film to date. Shot in black-and-white for that Andy Warhol feel, it stars Lili Taylor as a New York University philosophy student-turned-vampire who spends as much time pondering the Nietzschean significance of her gory deeds as she does finding her victims. Intriguing and stylish, if pretentiously over-intellectualised, the film is hard-hitting if you're in the right frame of mind and can cope with such arch dialogue as “Do you want an apology for ethical relativism?” Otherwise, approach with caution.

Ferrara bites off more than he can chew in this horror movie, using images of massacres and concentration camp victims to emphasize his depiction of power-crazed bloodlust let loose on society; but his fiction shrivels in the light of these actual horrors