I am a vampire apologetic, which means I love this particular genre of horror movies but at the same time realize there are lots of crap that one has to dig through to get to the "gems" so to speak. This leads me to "Night Junkies" a British film by Lawrence Pearce that has been described as "Near Dark meets Requiem for a Dream." While that’s true in a way (many of the scenes have "Requiem’s" visual style in some of the shots) this movie is its own animal. Taking some its cues from "Near Dark" vampires are treated more realistically as they don’t have any supernatural powers just the addiction to blood.
The acting was fairly solid throughout the movie with the standouts being Rene Zagger as the Jack the Ripperesque Matt and Jonathon Coyne as Max, which were both villainous roles but they were played completely different. Rene Zagger straddled that fine line between campy and creepy as he fully dived into the sometimes-ludicrous situations his character was put into like when he was lapping up the bloody corpse of a hooker. He reminded me of Bill Paxton in Near Dark. Jonathon Coyne’s Max was just completely slimy as the boss.
As far as the two leads were concerned, Giles Alderson and Katia Winter did a fairly good job with their roles basically playing the junkies and really selling the idea of blood addicts. Their initial meeting at a café was cute and staged like a real-life meeting between two people. Their relationship at times mirrors the Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto characters from Requiem for a Dream in that despite their addiction they are always are there for each other.
The look of the movie was gritty and at times a little too dark but it completely fit the movie. It was definitely a lot better looking than some of the low-budget horror movies I’ve seen. So if you are looking for a vampire movie that’s light on the pretentiousness and heavy on the drama Night Junkies is the movie for you.
https://www.nightjunkies.com/site/pages/index.php
