"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.

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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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