We are the Night

                “You have no idea what wonders await you here.”

Lena is a loner, a pickpocket, an anti-social misfit in a hood jacket who walks the streets because home life sucks. Lena’s mom flirts with her parole officer, her dwelling is not too flattering, and future prospects are none too promising. She happens to follow a couple urban youths into an underground club with lots of techno music and dancing. She doesn’t necessarily blend in, per se, but doesn’t actually look out of place. Running this club is a female vampire transfixed with Lena‘s eyes, named Louise. Louise is so swept up by her, she is dead set on indoctrinating Lena into her brood.

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“You won’t quench your thirst with abstinence.”

I think the draw for me (besides the film being about a pack of female vamps enjoying the fruits of the undead where it seems the attaining of wealth is oh so easy if you’re fortunate enough to be chosen as a bloodsucker not just a meal) is seeing a street urchin with a certain set of eyes appealing to a centuries-old vampire and all of a sudden turning into a goddess once she takes a gulp of blood. I love this one scene where Louise gives her this fast car worth who knows how much and just keys it before driving it off, smiling while behind the wheel. The dress and furs, soft photography that only amplifies her stunning beauty underneath all the grit and aimless rebellion now shed by the benefits of the bite, and jewelry, and wealth now adorning her thanks to Louise, still seems out of place and uncomfortable, although a smile sparks every now and then. Lena was chosen; she didn’t ask to be bitten. Regret and shame soon greet her ferociously when two security guards at a solarium are killed for their blood by Louise’s brood. This pivotal moment in the film sets Lena against her supposed family. This isn’t what Louise wanted. Louise wanted Lena. Louise even seems deeply sorry that the guards were killed by her girls.

“Welcome to the family.”

Look, I think we horror fans know the way things were to turn out. We have been to the vampire party more than once. We have been around the block quite a few times. The leader’s “latest acquisition” defies her, isn’t happy about the new “life” provided her, and there’s a fight at the end which usually results in the master destroyed by her “slave”. You can be given the fanciest digs, drive the nicest, flashiest car, wear all the top-of-the-line wardrobes available in the glitziest stores, and remain young and beautiful for centuries, but there are extenuating circumstances that entitle you to feed from the living and deprive life from others. Some vampires enjoy the feed; Lena doesn’t. She has a conscience. Someone like Charlotte, an actress in the silent era bitten by Louise always smoking cigarettes and reading novels, has numbly accepted her fate. Louise may have tired of Charlotte, picked Lena based on her eyes and aura, and so this family dynamic is fragile and vulnerable. Oh sure, it is all fun and games for a little while. There’s plenty of freedom to joyride and dance the night away, to climb walls and ceilings, to kill and screw, but when the body count rises and the cleaning up isn’t too neat and tidy the police/SWAT is certain to catch wind of your general direction eventually.

Lena complicates matters when she falls in love with a cop she was running from at the beginning of the film. She had pocketed cash from a Russian mobster hooking teenage girls, but the cop kind of let her antics slide because of who she pickpocketed. Louise is jealous, and her neediness takes precedence over Lena’s true feelings. Ultimately, this is about the allure and dissatisfaction with vampirism. Charlotte clearly conveys how depressing it could be to stay exactly as you are while your daughter is dying in a hospital from natural causes because of old age. Nora is a nympho, energetic and alive, a polar opposite of Charlotte; the night is bliss and fun and Nora plans to live it up something fierce. Louise simply wants Lena…despite all she has, the one thing she truly yearns for is unattainable.

 

The climactic battle gets all Matrix for a few minutes but ends as expected. Louise cannot allow Lena to love another and will make sure the young man is out of the way…Lena will have to fight Louise in order for him to be protected. Blades and guns do no good to the girls. Only the sun. The sun is used visually to rid the film of vampires. The final sky shot of the final burning vampire is really gnarly. A suicide makes since after a final hospital visit. I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing them scale walls. Only complaint (just personal preference) was there seemed to be a lot of erotic potential that never happens. The film remains a condemnation of vampirism. It says that there’s plenty of surface thrills in vampirism, but ultimately the idea of eternal loneliness and immortal emptiness when the parties and spending money and sex and bloodsucking all lose their favor doesn’t quite hold its spell over time. Charlotte is an example of that. Louise was always looking for a soulmate, hoping Lena was the one. She wasn’t. Louise seems to have it all, but she never had what she really wanted to start with.