DVD Artwork
Sometimes perfection just happens. The story goes that while sitting around the boardroom table, some screenwriters were asked to briefly summarize the plot of an upcoming movie, and their answer was “snakes on a plane”, which was the perfect movie title.
Another example is the storyline where the hitchhiking serial killer preys on those who give him a lift, being picked up by a serial killer who makes victims of the hitchhikers he picks up. Perfect symmetry.
Addicted to Murder approaches that second example, that type of conceptual perfection. A beautiful vampire, jaded by immortality, only feels emotion when she is “dying”. She meets a young man who burns with the dark need to kill. By forming a friendship, they each get what they need; he by murdering her again and again, and her by the high she experiences as he repeatedly takes her life. With such a promising foundation, it’s probably not surprising that this movie falls short of its potential.
The story jumps back and forth through time, so you really have to pay attention to what’s happening or you’ll get lost, especially since some important details are only hinted at rather than spelled out.
Joel (Mick McCleery) is the main character. As a boy, he inadvertently saved Rachel’s life by distracting a vampire slayer at a crucial moment. As a man, he’s a brooding and anti-social soul with acute anger issues, and only interacts with others when he has no other choice.
A lot of the story revolves around Joel and the complexity of what makes him what he is. The old standby, “abused as a child” is trotted out, but he himself dismisses that because even at an early age he was incapable of feeling any real emotion except anger. Sometimes people are just born fucked up in the head. He recognizes the abnormality in his psyche and struggles with it constantly.
Considering the fact that Joel is supposed to be emotionally empty, McCleery does a pretty good job of making the character interesting. We see his relationship with Rachel (Laura McLauchlin) only through flashbacks, and discover that Joel has moved to New York City after Rachel leaves him. Without the release that his relationship with Rachel provided, he compensates by murdering other women when the urge becomes too strong to fight. His acts of murder appear to happen because the opportunity presents itself, and we never see him specifically prepare and search for a new victim.
In the mail, Joel receives an invitation to a new dance club called “The Hungry”. He ignores the invitation, but more arrive as the days go by. Finally realizing that Rachel may be there, he goes one night and meets a vampire named Angie (Sasha Graham), who is also a queen-bitch of a manipulator. They begin a twisted relationship and Angie convinces Joel to become a Hunter by changing into a vampire. He resists for as long as he can, until Angie forces his hand in a big way.
The movie wraps up with yet another jump into the future, this time ten years forward. Joel has finally tracked down Rachel and it’s time for them to meet again. The ending is not quite a surprise and feels rushed, but it’s still satisfying.
Unlike some low-budget films (hell, unlike some high-budget films!), Addicted to Murder fully develops the main characters, showing them to be complex individuals whose actions are driven by consistent motivations (even if we can’t fully understand them). A few of the bit characters are stereotypes, but there is no trying to pass off idiosyncrasies as personality.
This movie was made in 1995, and its age is showing as regards the video quality. On my widescreen television the picture would become noticeably pixilated in certain scenes, especially the black and white flashback lead-ins. The picture quality in general was only fair, and the bits with the “interviews” in particular were poor. They were also edited with some sort of weird vertical letterboxing, and when combined with lip/sound synchronization problems they were by far the weakest part of the movie.
This brings us to my biggest gripe about the film – the sound. Obviously, they only had one microphone and placing it within the scenes was a challenge. You’re going to need your remote control in-hand throughout the movie because you’ll be adjusting the volume constantly. There were a few times when I had to rewind and crank it up in order to hear what a character was saying. For some movies I wouldn’t have bothered, but the dialogue in Addicted to Murder is excellent and worth the annoyance. Still, there were way too many scenes where one character sounded normal and the other sounded like they were speaking from the next room. To exacerbate the problem, the additional special effect sounds and music score were all added in post-production and are at full volume.
Still, the direction was solid and they made good use of lighting to establish mood. The camera effects were competently done and not so frequent that you got tired of them. There was little actual gore, but what was there looked pretty good. There was plenty of blood, and those effects were the best I’ve seen in a low-budget movie. The musical score was effective, if a little repetitive in places. The acting was much better than average.
This movie is part of a double feature on the DVD, along with Addicted to Murder II: Tainted Blood. The extras on the disk are nothing special. There’s a filmography for more than a dozen of the actors in the two movies, and a few really crappy trailers.
Addicted to Murder isn’t going to appeal to every horror fan. The film is relentlessly moody. There are no “jump” scares and no real tension is created because everyone’s role is revealed early on. You’ll have to work to appreciate it, both intellectually and physically (well, your volume-control finger anyway). Still, it’s an interesting film and worth the time and effort.
