It’s like an philosophy thesis you crammed to write the day before it’s due while listening to Floodland.
Shot in stark black and white and even more black, Abel Ferrara’s grim little tone poem takes a bite out of academia, cathexis, and the post-structuralist ego. Lili Taylor plays a philosophy grad student who gets turned into a vampire and deals with it by spiraling into nihilism, and then drags half the NYU faculty into the abyss with her.
If the title doesn’t already spoil it for you, this film explores vampirism as metaphor for drug addiction and Stoicism. There are no hissing nobles or gothic castles – just alleyways, small apartments, seminar rooms, and a haunting realisation that knowing better doesn’t save you from doing worse. Ferrara leans hard into Catholic guilt, but filters it through peak 90’s heroin chic and arthouse Sartrean dread.
If you’ve ever chain-smoked through a moral crisis while reading Nietzsche – and if like me, you thoroughly enjoy being both ironically and pretentiously arty farty, this one fits like an old pair of broken-in Doc Martins. -Pop