And I'm really, really glad you liked both Near Dark and The Hunger so much.
I really did. I had expected to enjoy Near Dark at least whenever Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, or Jenette Goldstein were onscreen, but I had not been sure about The Hunger past its principal actors and the fact that Sarandon was insistent on her character willingly having sex with another woman rather than being glamoured or beer-goggled into it. If anything I had ever read about it online had likened it to Tanith Lee, I would have known what I was getting.
At the time, The Hunger was the most visually exciting film I'd ever seen, especially in its initial sequence--the idea of so much intercutting, all these vaguely sifted narratives commenting on each other, resonating with each other, providing imagistic assonance, made me dizzy and happy.
Your description of images as assonance is exactly right. One of the reasons I don't think it's a stupid film is that it trusts its audience to put these echoes together for themselves rather than spelling out the connections outright in the plot, where they would have felt just too on the nose—and if the script had been any more specific about Sarah's cutting-edge research, way outdated thirty-four years later. I do like that what she does with her inherited millions of vampire money is fund the clinic. If she stays in the field, she's just become her own best subject.
The ending wasn't satisfying for me at the time, because it seemed just as unlikely and illogical as the ending of Near Dark, without the emotional closure. But I'm okay with it now, because I kind of have to be.
It is a weird ending: I was talking to spatch about it in the shower. It doesn't totally break the film's own rules, but it requires the audience to accept that maybe even Miriam didn't know all of them. I think the transference of power works because Miriam ingests so much of Sarah's already-altered blood, turning the process back on her, but the attic of dust-rotted lovers coming back to life is a little more take-on-faith Gothic, or maybe H. Rider Haggard. rushthatspeaks thought it might have happened because there is so much vampire blood all over the floor, it can't help waking them. Does it match the ending of the novel or is this is not an applicable question? I don't know how closely the two relate to one another generally.
no subject
Oh, cool! Is there a copy of the review online?
And I'm really, really glad you liked both Near Dark and The Hunger so much.
I really did. I had expected to enjoy Near Dark at least whenever Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, or Jenette Goldstein were onscreen, but I had not been sure about The Hunger past its principal actors and the fact that Sarandon was insistent on her character willingly having sex with another woman rather than being glamoured or beer-goggled into it. If anything I had ever read about it online had likened it to Tanith Lee, I would have known what I was getting.
At the time, The Hunger was the most visually exciting film I'd ever seen, especially in its initial sequence--the idea of so much intercutting, all these vaguely sifted narratives commenting on each other, resonating with each other, providing imagistic assonance, made me dizzy and happy.
Your description of images as assonance is exactly right. One of the reasons I don't think it's a stupid film is that it trusts its audience to put these echoes together for themselves rather than spelling out the connections outright in the plot, where they would have felt just too on the nose—and if the script had been any more specific about Sarah's cutting-edge research, way outdated thirty-four years later. I do like that what she does with her inherited millions of vampire money is fund the clinic. If she stays in the field, she's just become her own best subject.
The ending wasn't satisfying for me at the time, because it seemed just as unlikely and illogical as the ending of Near Dark, without the emotional closure. But I'm okay with it now, because I kind of have to be.
It is a weird ending: I was talking to