Customer Reviews

Night Junkies

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I hesitate to call Night Junkies a vampire film because it is well outside the normal convention of that genre. Night Junkies is a gritty, urban street drama about a pair of addicts, Ruby and Vincent. Only they are not addicted to drugs or alcohol---their addiction is to blood. Ruby (Katia Winter) is a dancer at a seedy London strip club. The club's owner, Maxi, is pressuring Ruby and the other dancers, to perform "other services" besides just lap dances.

Ruby meets Vincent (Giles Alderson) at a coffee house and finds herself intrigued by the handsome, brooding, and soft-spoken man. Their meeting leads to a one-night stand but turns to horror as Vincent bites Ruby on the throat. Thinking he's simply a psycho Ruby flees back to the club and into a beating from Maxi for failing to collect any money from her tryst. Ruby soon is overcome by illness and confronts Vincent who reveals what he is, and what Ruby is now. They don't use the word vampire but Vincent explains that holy water just makes them wet and garlic gives them bad breath. The sun does burn him and a bullet to the head will kill him as well as a stake through the heart.

They are junkies in every sense of the word...their addiction to blood eating away at them and creating an irresistible craving. This is especially frightening for Ruby who is terrorized by dreams of a man...perhaps her father...graphically injects himself with heroin, and falls into spastic convulsions as Ruby looks on as a child. Vincent gives Ruby a lesson in feeding, showing her how he kills only those who won't be missed and dumps their bodies into the Thames. A disgusted Ruby wants no part of killing to survive and urges Vincent to simply stop drinking blood and go cold turkey. One can speculate if it's the horror of drinking blood, or the horror of her dreams that repulses her so much.

Night Junkies is stylish film noir. The film is set entirely at night. The dingy club office of Maxi is sparsely lit and you half expect to see the shadow of a slowly rotating ceiling fan. All of the performances are impressive because they are so real. Maxi is the epitome of a slimy strip club owner. Women are mere commodities to him, to be used to keep him wealthy. Winter and Alderson give powerful yet reserved performances as Ruby and Vincent. They resist the urge to overact or over dramatize their roles and come off as tragic, yet sympathetic characters. Rene' Zagger also turns in an exceptional performance as the demented Matt, the one character in the film who is over-the-top and wickedly so...

Night Junkies is a low budget film that manages to squeeze the most it can out of the actors and the meager plot. Lawrence Pearce wrote the film and also serves as its director. Pearce's use of faint lighting and deep shadows permeates the film, and serves to perhaps hide his slight budget. Vampires aside, and the vampiric overtone is really downplayed, this is a fascinating character study of an unusual type of addiction, and a different take on the vampire genre.

REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON

I loved the movie all the way. I though the villain in this movie was very much like the joker in the new batman he was great. I loved the love story. I liked the whole film.

An amazing film. The director shot a moving piece of art. Light is strong, the lead is sexy, & as unbelievable as it may sounds it's an almost believable vampire movie. You can't go wrong as long as you don't pay an arm and a leg, but in my opinion it is definitely one of the better modern vampire films out there.

Gritty? When I saw that review I had to write my own. "Night Junkies" is not a gritty film. Nor is it that far outside the genere, as the vampire-as-junkie film has only recently been done elsewhere; e.g. "I Pass For Human", & "The Thirst". This has better production values than those two films I'll grant it that. But there's something that peeves me about a film that deceives from the very front cover - featuring a girl with puncture marks in her neck. There's no fangs in this film. Instead the vampires tear into the throats of their victims. This serves only to trick people into buying a film they might otherwise avoid.

This is exactly what I look for in vampire movies; huge [...], women stripping, lots of blood sucking and plenty of violence. Towards the end of the movie, you see mostly violence and blood sucking. The movie is about male vampires stalking prey at night, they visit a strip club and have sex with some of the strippers and stalk and kill the women. There is the typical vampire line up, the evil vampire that wants to feed and kill on everyone and the good vampire that falls in love with one of the strippers and tries to save her from the evil vampire.

Vampire movies come and go. Vampire comes in, drinks blood, someone hunts him (or her), and so on and so on. This has a different take. Blood addiction. Other reviewers talked about that one, so I plan on focusing on something different.

The make up artists were really spot on. And the same thing with the sound effects. That blood looked realistic and when flesh was being sunk into, I cringed.

The acting wasn't anything spectacular, though. The director and actors were not inspired to bring out their best. At times, I could swear the actors just learned their lines just before rushing onto the camera. But that's rare.

Buy this movie, but don't expect great things. This movie is okay.

this was pretty weird and cool at the same time acting was ok story was ok vampire effects were ok this movie was ummm ok lol

I was lured into buying this one since the description of the story sounded pretty good. Once I put this one into the player though, it was all over. Instead of a good Vampire Thriller, all I got was a movie that couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a vampire film or some kind of a strange violent - romantic road movie type of a film. Hence, my advice don't waste your money or time on this one. There are plenty of better movies around.

Night Junkies did manage to keep my attention, however I felt like I was watching a movie more like Requeim for a Dream than a vampire movie. It's not what I was expecting.

I found Night Junkies to be a rather bold new take on the ever-popular vampire story. I'm not saying it's a complete success, but it's interesting and different - and the result of a wholehearted effort on the part of the filmmakers, as the cinematography is just as important to the overall effect as the storyline itself. Clearly, the film won't appeal to everyone, including many a horror fan, but I don't see it as a "love it or hate it" kind of movie. I think the writers and director actually try too hard at times - if I had heard the lead male character launch into one more soliloquy equating vampirism with other kinds of addictions, I believe I might have tried jumping into my monitor a la Shocker and give him a good thrashing. Admittedly my immediate personal reaction was more ambivalent than anything else, but as I've spent time reflecting upon what I saw (as I prepared to write this review), I have come to better appreciate and respect this unconventional vampire movie.

This modern-day vampire story takes place in one of the seedier sections of London, where wretched men such as Max (looking quite Kingpin-like) control the very lives of young, hopeless girls like Ruby Stone (Katia Winter). Ruby just can't seem to get with Max's program of pimping his club's strippers out to any bloke with a hundred and fifty pounds. As if Max's constant intimidation isn't enough, Ruby also has to deal with another sick pervert of an employee who gives voice to his own obscene desires for her. Walking away from this ruinous world isn't easy, though - especially at this particular time, for a 21st-century Saucy Jack is at work in the streets, already claiming the lives of 13 prostitutes. Then one night, whether by accident or fate, Ruby meets a young fellow named Vincent Monroe (Giles Anderson), and she ends up going home with him despite the fact that he seems obsessed with the idea of vampires actually existing and looking like normal people (well, he should know). Unable to control his passions, Vincent attacks Ruby but does not kill her, leaving her no choice but to return to the strip joint for further abuse at the hands of her boss. She has no idea what Vincent has done to her until he returns to explain the changes suddenly coming over her. Linked by their mutual "addiction," Vincent and Ruby settle into a dysfunctional love affair.

I would actually consider this film a tragedy. Try as she might, Ruby just can't shake her addictions or her history. She may have quit stripping, but that doesn't mean Max and his henchmen are quite ready to let her go - nor does it mean the puny pervert at the club who was always begging her to have sex with him is just suddenly going to forget all about her, either. Then there's the vampirism thing - Ruby refuses to feed on human blood, but that's a tall order indeed. She and Vincent start popping Vicodin and similar drugs to help them overcome the tortures of withdrawal. Watching them turn to alternative addictive substances to beat their current addiction, I couldn't help but feel as if some kind of universal truth was being communicated in the most subtle of ways here.

Fate, that most capricious of gods, comes calling in the end, leaving a trail of what ifs? in his wake. It makes for a pretty powerful conclusion, one which I consider beautiful in its own way. If all you care about is blood and nudity, you'll get that in Night Junkies - but you will also get a surprisingly deep, refreshing, and dare I say existential study of the human condition along with it. This is the type of bold and daring filmmaking that is all too lacking in the movie industry these days (and I will be most interested in seeing what young writer/director Lawrence Pearce comes up with next). Night Junkies has its problems, but I think it's definitely worth seeing if you're a vampire fan.