"TWO TICKETS...FOR THE RIDE OF YOUR LIFE"

A friend of mine once asked me, “Why do vampire movies always have to do with sex?” It’s a bit like asking why gangster movies always have to do with violence: it’s part of the definition. Vampires as we know them are relatively new culturally speaking. They’re not as old as say, ghosts, werewolves or witches. Sure, myriad blood-suckers have permeated cultures the world over but the human looking sophisticate is a new breed. Their particular body of superstition flowered only in the last couple of centuries. Famous vampire fantasies from Dracula and Carmilla to the more contemporary Interview with the Vampire or Twilight have been borne almost exclusively out of repressed sexual neuroses and obsessions.

The metaphorical context is pervasive: the symbolic act of penetration, the exchange of bodily fluids, the disease transmitted through the act, the fall from grace, the seduction, the violence, the cost…One of the reasons why vampires never seem to go away is that sex is always on our minds – among other places – no matter how guilty we feel about it. The sex in Habit has heat yes, but it is also ragged and bloody and there’s not a whole lot of romance to it. It’s about neediness, brutal physical neediness, desperate neediness. The need to fill up a hole in you that just won’t go away. More often than not it happens on the floor and looks like a struggle between predator and prey more than a sensual encounter between two hip New Yorkers. One of the many twists in the movie is that the predator in this case, is a woman, or rather, a female. The prey is not just a man, he’s a loser. The natural question is how much said prey is complicit in his own demise. How much does he want what happens to happen? And is that why she’s beautiful even though he, most assuredly, is not – because for him, dying is the most attractive option? Is it what he feels he deserves, the only way out of the mess his life has become?

 Habit doesn’t feel like a horror movie. It’s a New York story…with fangs. It could’ve come from the pen of Hubert Selby Jr. or Mary Gaitskill. It’s the vampire flick a young Sidney Lumet or Martin Scorsese might have made back in the early ’70’s. Writer-director and star, Larry Fessenden professes to be a fan of John Cassavetes. It shows. The city is a character in and of itself, many of the scenes are lit with saturated, almost lurid colors, the story drives forward with an intimate, neurotic intensity and all of the acting is clean, honest, devoid of affectation. It’s as though Fessenden didn’t set out to make a vampire story at all. He could’ve chosen any one of a million relationships in Manhattan to make a movie about and just happened to choose this one, a tale of two disaffected, lonely people whose particular obstacles to happiness happen to be the alcoholism of one and the propensity of the other to suck the blood out of the first. Details.

Calling the vampirism in Habit a metaphor seems too easy, almost trite. It’s true but in execution the bracing humanism of the piece saves it from easy categorizing. Fessenden plays Sam, a bedraggled, snaggle-toothed, alcoholic bar manager. Sam is a beleaguered everyman, a guy you’ve seen in a hundred bars, on a hundred street corners. When Sam is having fights with his ex-girlfriend or getting drunk and trying to make sense of his life, the conversations feel stumbled upon, discovered, as opposed to scripted and staged. Fessenden is an astute documenter of the human condition. He understands the rhythms of natural speech and body language. He knows how to get the most of any one particular image. I can’t remember the last movie I saw where the state of the room the characters walked into communicated so much about what had happened or what was going to happen. Fessenden is a deftly subtle craftsman. Neither the supernatural moments nor the relationship moments are ever hit over the head. Hints are dropped here and there that won’t be missed necessarily if not seen. The characters speak in short-hand. Hell, they’ve known each other for years. Clues to intention or meaning are revealed and then forgotten. The first time Anna comes to Sam’s apartment she leans against the doorjamb while softly asking him, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” It could be a tender moment of flirtation or it could be…something else. But the movie is never about a single moment but the accumulation of moments that create a life. It’s just not an approach to horror that you run into very often.

The title of the movie is not just an ironic reference to the curse foisted upon Sam by his un-dead girlfriend, it’s the state of his life. He’s addicted to his own inertia. And not just him. Every single one of his friends and lovers – except for Anna, the vampire – has a problem with his drinking. Everyone recognizes it’s a danger in his life and he should probably stop. Yet, throughout the movie they all constantly offer him alcohol… because it’s a habit, because they don’t know what else to do, because alcohol is how they interact. One can’t help but wonder about the attraction of Sam to anyone, let alone the women in his life. He’s a mess. He’s dumb, directionless, drinks too much and has a history of violence. And he’s as ugly as home-made soap. Yet the women don’t just come to him, they pine for him when he’s gone. It would seem bizarre if you didn’t see it played out all the time in real life. Sam is a vortex to a certain kind of woman. They can’t resist him. Once he’s underneath their skin, they can’t shake him loose. It’s because he’s such a mess that they fall in love with him, because he needs so much. His relationship to Anna is only the most nakedly co-dependent relationship in his life.

It is hard to say if the characters feel so real because the relationships seem so spot-on or vice versa. It doesn’t matter. The acting throughout Habit is immensely grounded. There’s a reason why sometimes actors aren’t the best course or at least famous actors. Movie stars, for instance, bring their own brand of charisma that sometimes you just can’t get around. Brilliant though they are, Jeffrey Wright or Daniel Day Lewis or Cate Blanchett would throw Habit out of whack. The force of their personalities and talent would be too much. What Fessenden has assembled here is a circle of friends. These people feel like they’ve known each other for years, they feel lived-in, comfortable. They feel like people.

Fessenden’s Sam is a fabulous character. He’s a walking disaster. Sam is to foreheads what Bruce Campbell’s Ash is to chins – a sort of demi-god. His hair looks like it’s on a jail-break from his skull. He’s got holes in his smile and his head is crooked. He’s reached the point in his alcoholism where the bottles suck out of him as much as they pour in. His girlfriend has dumped him, his dad just died, his mom was already dead, and his job is going nowhere fast. He’s a broken bottle with arms and legs. He’s not a particularly attractive character and he’s hard to get inside at first. Not because he’s not open but because who would want to? Sheesh, I have my own problems. Over the course of the movie though, you warm to him. Sam is a guy with problems. You either know someone like that or you've been him, or are him. Fessenden doesn’t apologize for Sam and really, it’s the only way to sell him.

Meredith Snaider is a more ambiguous experience. She’s a striking presence, she feels very New York. What she does here is not so much acting as much as she seems to settle on the movie like snow. It doesn’t feel like she’s doing anything at all. Her entire performance feels like it’s almost just her look. Then all of a sudden you have a very complex emotional response to this vampire. You weren’t even aware it was happening. You trust her, you don’t trust her. She’s sexy AND creepy. She’s soft and sharp. She might even really care about Sam. When she’s hurt or angry – or jealous – almost nothing happens at all yet you see it happening, you feel it. When she confronts one of the women in Sam’s life her menace is palpable but not overbearing. She confronts her as one woman to another and her cruelty is as off-handed as it is unerring in its accuracy. When a moment later, she tries to seduce that same woman it somehow feels natural. This is part of her game. And you wonder, somehow, if she’s just lined up her next victim. That this is Meredith Snaider’s only movie thus far is interesting. It gives the whole project a Shadow of the Vampire effect. Hmmm…

Rae, Rae’s boyfriend Nick, the ex-girlfriend Liza, Sam’s entire circle of friends all seem very different from Anna. None of them feel particularly comfortable around her. They recognize she’s different and the relationship doesn’t make sense to them. The women naturally, feel the most uneasy. Like Meredith Snaider, Habit is Aaron Beall’s only movie. It’s too bad. His Nick is a unique performance that doesn’t go out of its way to draw attention to itself. Nick is just a loud guy, a little full of himself. The scene where Sam finally tries to tell Nick that Anna is a vampire and may be slowly destroying him is beautiful. It’s one of the best depictions of that moment I’ve ever seen. Generally, when the protagonist tells the other characters that what they’re actually dealing with is the supernatural, or aliens, or space travelers, or whatever, that’s always a problematic moment in movies. They always go too much one way or the other. Here it is handled as honestly and realistically as I’ve ever seen it done. The presentation of the problem and the reaction make it feel like real life. What if you did have a friend who was a mess and they came to you and said “My girlfriend is a genuine, real-life, un-dead, blood-sucking, sun-shunning, card-carrying vampire.” How would you really react? Part of you would be just flat out concerned for your friend, no, worried they’d snapped? Nick is undone. He doesn’t know what to tell his friend. He flounders around for an answer, a solution but when Sam tells him to just go he’s relieved.

It’s only one gem in a movie filled with them. For all its naturalism, Habit is undoubtedly a work of prodigious intelligence and craftsmanship. Its spontaneity is constructed. Fessenden is always aware moment to moment of what is happening inside of his audience. He never has an accidental moment or a frame without meaning. It’s not that he never makes a mistake. Part of the point of the piece feels like you’re supposed to question whether or not Anna is a vampire or Sam is just crazy. But because of little moments that happen here and there, the conclusion the audience will reach is never really in doubt. But in general Fessenden is able to sustain his conceits. You can agree or disagree with a choice he’s made but you never doubt that it was, in fact, his choice. That’s what he wanted. Fessenden’s vision is intensely personal, his approach to horror determinedly refreshing. There is, after all, more than one way to skin the cat – or to suck the blood from the living. Hopefully, we’ll see Fessenden take another foray into bringing the supernatural to the streets of America.

Habit was a Zombie Boy recommendation.

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Zombie Boy  - Wow.   |12.197.177.xxx |2009-02-11 19:49:58 I had hoped you would like it, but I didn't quite expect this glowing of a review. You will be happy to know that Fessenden has gone on to be quite a prolific producer of independent films. I wish he directed as much as he acts, but I guess it makes his films more honest to only do them when he is inspired. Anyway, great review, and I really glad you enjoyed it.

Angela Mac  - Fang, Fang, Bang, Bang   |67.142.161.xxx |2009-02-11 20:04:55 "The need to fill up a hole in you that just won’t go away." Yes. Why, that's just the way I always explain it. Hope the film is as well crafted as the review.

Midnight Butterfly  - Thanks   |76.115.19.xxx |2009-02-11 21:12:49 Thanks for the recommendation. I was pretty surprised at how much I liked it. After watching it, you're like "How come more people don't take this approach?"

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