On DVD: Night Junkies

Written and Directed by Lawrence Pearce

Starring Jonathan Coyne, Katia Winter, Giles Anderson

Night Junkies, the latest horror release from Allumination Filmworks, gives us a new twist on the vampire mythos while keeping the basic elements of it intact. Young writer/director Lawrence Pearce saw the obvious parallels between vampires and drug users and merged them into a single story about blood addiction on the seedy streets of East London.

 The Movie

 The movie opens strangely with our main protagonist having a phone conversation with someone about his theory on vampires. When the camera changes to her, all we see are her lips. He asks her out, and she explains that, as she said before, she cannot do that and that his credit is up. Credits roll as we change to a back alley vampire attack on a young woman, then a montage of scenes revolving around a drug user who eventually shoots himself in the head while a little girl listens in another room. As the credits end the girl turns into our female lead, Ruby (Katia Winter) who is being scolded by her boss (Jonathan Coyne). Boss claims to be scared for her, because too many girls are being killed on the street recently and she has a nice place to work where she is. We next see that she is at a strip club, which means we see our first of several nude scenes about 8 minutes into the film.

She soon meets the guy on the phone in a coffee shop as she is trying to get away from annoying thugs on the street. Vincent (Giles Alderson) pretends to be her boyfriend so the guys leave her alone then convinces her to stay for a latte and a blueberry muffin. Soon he is telling her his vampire theories and she says she thinks he is cute (and for some people, cute trumps dangerously strange) and soon they are showing each other how cute they are under all those clothes to a very cool version of House of the Rising Sun.

Afterwards, she is sleeping while he fights then succumbs to his blood addiction and attacks her. She pushes him away, he apologizes and she runs back to the club. Soon she is becoming weaker and sicker and showing signs similar to that of junkies. This disappoints her loving boss, who then beats her. Eventually she finds her way back to Vincent and love blossoms. Then there is a lot more blood.

These vampires are exactly like drug junkies in every way except the expense and the need for dope dealers, but they do have to dump a lot of bodies into the Thames. They don’t appear to be super strong or fast, religious icons don’t harm them, a bullet in the head will kill them as easily as a stake in the heart and, as Vincent sagely tutors Ruby, on garlic, that it only makes our breath stink .Ruby’s bite mark clearly shows that they don’t grow fangs, either. They do blister in the sun, but this only brought up briefly and doesn’t became a major plot point because everything takes place in the night where there are more monsters than vampires creeping around in the dark. The element of fear in this film stems from the vampire’s  incontrollable urge to satisfy their hunger and to see us as only a means to sate that. Also, the horror that, with one bite, we can be just like those junkies we avoid on the street. Pearce’s movie deromanticizes the vampire legend in a way it has needed for a long time and shows them here for what they really are: a tragic combination of both victim and predator.

These other monsters in the dark include two secondary characters whose actors give the best performance of the film. Jonathan Coyne, who also briefly appeared in the second Laura Croft film, plays the club owner/loving boss/pimp with Mafioso class and gusto in a style reminiscent of Bob Hoskins in Unleashed. Rene Zagger starts out giving an over-the-top performance as a flunky for The Boss who works in a whore house but claims to hate whores. However, that doesn’t stop him from stalking Ruby, the potential hooker with a heart of gold if The Boss can ever get her to turn her first trick. Towards the end of the film, we see that Zagger’s character is more insane than we realize but for a damn good reason, and Zagger’s conversation with a deaf woman in the hallway before he zooms in on Ruby in Vincent’s apartment almost steals the show.

However, I don’t want you to think that I loved the movie. I didn’t I liked it and appreciated what the filmmaker was trying to do. Some of the performances were stilted, the movie pacing was slow and I wasn’t convinced that Ruby would so quickly fall into the loving arms of Vincent, the man that cursed her. There are quoted reviews on the back of the box, with one claiming this film has the hottest women ever seen in a vampire flick.  If that’s all you are looking for, this may be the film for you. I highly recommend the naked performance by Lauren Adams very early in the film as she deftly explains her theories on British prostitution laws to Vincent who has probably just finished talking about his theories on vampires again off camera a few minutes before.

However, if you are a vampire fan and want more than Lestat-like pretty boys dancing though something claiming to be a horror novel, this film may be worth viewing.

6.5/10

The Video

Much of the widescreen presentation was shot outdoor at night, and I thought some scenes seemed a little dark and the colors are sometimes muted, it enhances the mood of the rough street life led by these characters but you have to be careful and not make things so dark the story is hard to follow.

7/10

The Audio

The sound was recorded in Dolby and is very clear. I enjoyed some of the music that was used in the film, which included songs by the London band The Downliners.  The presentation is basic, limited by the film’s budget, but overall not bad with that consideration.

7/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features

The movie came in the standard case. The cover art was nice, and it along with the photos on the back gives an essence of the dynamics of the film without giving too much away. The bonus features are almost non-existent. The only extras for the film are Spanish subtitles and a trailer. There were also trailers for four other films, two of which were released at least two years ago.

2/10

Overall (Not an Average) 6/10

The Movie 6/10

The Video 7/10

The Audio 7/10

The Packaging and Bonus Features 2/10

Overall (Not an Average) 6/10

-Fred Grimm