Night Junkies (2007)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Absolutely the worst movie.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

During the first minutes of this movie I was ready to absolutely hate it. Cheap looking, filmed entirely at night, darkness, ultra cheap sets, very narrow focus on just people- little scenery, unintelligible British accents- and yet another re-interpretation that butchers vampirism.But as things progressed, I found myself looking past those shortcomings and actually liking this movie. The problems didn't go away by any means, but the performances by Katia Winter (Ruby), who is a hottie, and by the main villain played by René Zagger, make this movie actually worthwhile.The movie begins somewhat incongruously mixing past and future in short unconnected scenes. There's the murder of a woman by a serial killer, a guy chatting to a girl on a phone-sex line, the same guy driving a car and talking about addiction, strippers dancing. Among those strippers is Ruby who is abused and mistreated by her boss and his muscle because she doesn't want to offer "additional services" to clients at the club. She runs into our main male character who is a vampire. He treats vampirism as an addiction that needs to be satisfied every night. He cannot control himself and turns Ruby into a vampire.Ruby, however, is not willing to kill others for blood. They both agree to try and quell the urge by taking relaxants, pain relievers and other pills until they can drive to a dr. who can help them. But their plans are foiled by the club-owners muscle who is in love with Ruby. Not only that but he's also the serial killer who has been brutally killing women. And eventually he finds Ruby. But he has another surprise: he's a vampire as well! At the end of the movie all of the short scenes that were put at the beginning of the movie are reconnected to clarify things. Personally, I hate vampire movies that aren't vampire movies. This is one of them. This could very well be an addiction movie. Aside from that though, this movie grows on you because Ruby is well-acted, sympathetic, pretty, and sexy. The villain is brutal and ruthless yet comical in a way. The actor mixes your standard sadistic misogynist with Elvis, making a remarkable character. There's one outlandish scene of him licking the face of one of his victims that starts out just looking funny but becomes cringe-inducing after a while. As a vampire movie, this is pretty bad, but if you look at this movie as a human drama it's actually worth a look.

Kudos to the filmmakers behind this for having the guts to make such an edgy new take on Vampire films in a country that is swamped with boring socio-realist dramas or wet romantic comedies.I've just finished watching Night Junkies, and finally, a film I love in a city I live in. Great stuff! I'll never walk past the Thames or look at Canary Wharf in the same way again.Bought my copy from the States (Amazon.com) and it's a multi-region copy by the way. So fellow Brits order it, and it's half price thanks to the favourable exchange rate. Haha!Oh and the old lady scene is inspirational! ;)Jamie

Gets so many points across metaphorically without shouting them out, for 70% of the time its a vampire revenge movie, for the rest its a love story and all the time it's a story about addiction of any kind. To my mind it's pure genius. I haven't heard of this director before, but I will be looking for anything in the future and anything including shorts in the past. I cannot believe this movie is not being hyped by the studio, other than the sex/stripper scenes it's not too strong. The cinematography while stealing from other directors, is timed well, placed well and gives the movie the look it is aiming for. If you see a film about vampires and you smoke, drink too much or do too much Peruvian Marching powder, then this is a movie that shows you what you are.

As a puritanical fan of cinema and the concept of vampires, I have felt woefully let down by the spate of vampire flicks in recent years. The low budget ones especially have been cringe worthy. And then Lawrence Pearce comes along with his debut feature to restore my faith. It goes to show what someone with talent and vision can do on a true shoestring of a budget.Night Junkies banishes the supernatural and elitist aspects that are always tied to the vampire genre, and gone too is the un-relatable overly brooding protagonist. Pearce's vampires are junkies in the truest sense of the term, and it is certainly a much more disturbing context, particularly with a view to the more than psychotic character: these are just people, albeit with a very unusual addiction. It creates a vulnerability in the characters that is endearing, and allows for the humanising moral debate within the vampires on who they feed on, or even if they could bring themselves to do it at all, giving them fantastic depth instead of emotional flat-lining.Neither the sex nor the violence are at all gratuitous – although it is certainly shocking in places. Misogyny is not a keyword for this movie, but sexy certainly is. While most vampire movies flirt with the idea of eroticism, this film puts out. And the key thing to it is that it is never out of place, you never think that it is there for audience titillation; it flows smoothly with the plot, as it should.The Tarantino references are well earned, and like all good Tarantino movies, this movie has plenty of lines to quote. The script is fantastic in fact; the dialogue is never over fussy or disjointed. And as with any script, the delivery can make or break it. Despite the general rule that low budget equals less than second-rate acting, this film refuses to conform. The acting is far superior to other low budget movies in the genre, divine in places I would go so far to say. And while the plot is certainly dark, it is never gloomy, there is a humour to it that us horror fans particularly enjoy, especially when it is done so well so as not to detract from the mood or to create moments where it becomes a parody.I think one of the biggest joys of this movie is that it doesn't just appeal to a singular demographic or type of movie fan: it isn't limited to the enjoyment of the die-hard vampire or horror movie buff. It is enjoyable on both those levels, of course, but also for the drama and thriller audience this would hold a thrall. In fact the romance that unravels between Ruby and Vincent is truly captivating; it is a real romance, not the numb emotionally stunted whim so often portrayed in films of the genre that Pearce has managed to give the kiss of life. In short, seeing this film almost makes you feel that you have seen a number as it fills the need that each of the genres of horror, drama, thriller and romance fill – you finish it feeling satiated in the best sense of the word.I can't wait to see what will come next from this director, and I can only hope and pray for another instalment in this world he has created so expertly.