The Hunger

Review

Lesbian Vampires, David Bowie, and a Terrance Zdunich recommendation what more could a movie need. I found out about this movie from that one tv documentary about ‘50 great horror movies you’ve never seen’ and this is easily the best movie of the three I’ve watched off of this list. But in reality is it tough competition between this, ‘Grace’ and fucking ‘Humanoids from the Deep’. This movie is the first actually solid movie to come off of the list but that’s not the same as being a great movie hence the 5/10.

The Hunger is about a vampire couple who are living happily, killing together, enjoying external life. Suddenly, David Bowie begins rapidly aging and his vampire lover. Miriam, who has had this happen to all of her other lovers begins to look elsewhere for a new lover leaving David Bowie to die. David Bowie searches for help from a sleep institute which is doing research into how to turn back the internal clock. Even though David Bowie doesn’t get the help he needs, the lead researcher catches the eye of Miriam. Once David Bowie becomes too week, Miriam puts him in a box, in a room filled with her other lovers and begins to go after the sleep researcher who is looking for David Bowie to help him. Miriam seduces the sleep researcher and turns her into a vampire but when Miriam tries to integrate the sleep researcher into the lifestyle, the sleep researcher turns on her which leads to all of Miriam’s former lovers rebelling against her and killing her, finally releasing their own souls into death.

This movie is very beautiful, that’s pretty much the biggest strength of this film. It’s very gothic, hazy and dream-like in a way that almost similar to that one scene in Candyman where Helen is at dinner. The visuals of the monkeys tearing each other apart while Miriam and David Bowie are having sex is so cool, Miriam’s house is absolutely gorgeous, and the scene when Miriam turns the sleep researcher is really beautiful. There’s so many aesthetic details, like Miriam’s room full of doves or the Ankh daggers that they use to feed which makes this movie a visual delight. Watching this movie, it made so much sense why Terrance Zdunich likes this film.

Now for the more technical aspects of the movie. The pacing isn’t the best and is honestly quite odd. The beginning of the conflict of the movie is the fact that David Bowie is aging, in my head there’s two ways for this to go, he dies pretty immediately and now Miriam is left to look for a new companion or, we spend the movie focusing on him trying to get help only for him to die right at the end and for Miriam to take the sleep researcher he had been seeing as her new lover. This movie tried to go both routes which lead David Bowie to die somewhere in the middle almost suddenly when compared to the pacing of the movie at the beginning and the end. The other big issue with trying to go both routes is it made both feel not very well fleshed out and like they could have had 30 mins more attached to each plot line.

There were three writers on this film and I think you can really feel that with the way that so many ideas about the story which don’t really pan out entirely, if at all. For example, Alice’s place in the story is so strange. She’s this random child who spends time with the Blaylocks learning the violin, and in the end she encounters old David Bowie, she talks about liking his character and then gets killed by him and then is pretty much irrelevant from the rest of the movie. There’s a detective looking for her, but he only shows up once while the story is still panning out and then right at the end to explain that Miriam did in fact die. Miriam basically doesn’t react to it only saying ‘what have you done?’ and it just ends up feeling like our time spent with Alice was a waste and like someone in the writing room really was championing for her while the other two were entirely disinterested in her character. I think this three writer situation is very interesting considering this movie is based off a book so at the very least they had a basis to work off of, so why were 3 writers needed and how did this movie have such a plot-less feel.

This movie is very good in terms of vibes but in terms of quality writing and a satisfying story, I recommend looking elsewhere. However, the vibes on this movie were absolutely immaculate and I'll probably watch it again on that basis alone.