How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 11 October 2012
This article is a review of WE ARE THE NIGHT. |
“Humans fall apart so easily,” Nora
I know what you’re thinking: Do we really need another vampire movie? Like its undead Zombie subgenre sibling, every nation wants to contribute their take. Ever since I read Bram Stoker, I’m happy to check out interesting looking bloodsucker pics. Most are dreary and I side step.
I know what you’re thinking: Do we really need another vampire movie? Like its undead Zombie subgenre sibling, every nation wants to contribute their take. Ever since I read Bram Stoker, I’m happy to check out interesting looking bloodsucker pics. Most are dreary and I side step.
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From the director of THE WAVE, a high school flick about how easily a fascist hegemony can be born, I was most intrigued what he could bring. While not at all invigorating Stoker’s legacy, the filmmakers do two things well:
- Create something achingly slick (and never boring), and
- Actually make something feminist.
There are only 100 vampires left in the world. 40 in Europe. All women. The males of the species have been exterminated for being greedy and weak.
Berlin, Germany; the focus is a gang lead by Louise (Nina Hoss, recently on our shores in BARBARA). The other two are the party-hard Nora, and the morose Charlotte. The credit sequence neatly has images of Louise through the ages, but then a worrying voice over kicks in. Disconcerting, as it is so arbitrary, we don’t hear disembodied tones again; and the content: she talks about searching centuries for her soulmate. Uh-oh! Alarm bells. TWILIGHT alert!! Luckily for audiences tired of the trite, the lovey-dovey stuff from Louise is sinister rather than gloopy. Her target is Lena (Karoline Herfurth – PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDER), a Lisbeth Salander-GIRL WITH DRAGON TATTOO-looking pickpocket. Louise wastes little time in turning Lena into the undead. The transformation is stylish.
There’s no nudity and women are not talked down to. The gang is super-humanly strong, and bat-like can cling to walls and ceilings. The action sequences are fun, and the body count is surprisingly high. WE ARE THE NIGHT is not deep, but not stupid either. Lena, as the lead, is not trying to get a boyf, instead wrestling with her new world and the amorality that seems to be concomitant with it.
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