I’ve kind of been on an 80’s kick over the last while as I revisit a decade that I always hated after the fact, like revisiting the place where you grew up and desperately tried to escape from. But as a mid-adult now, looking back, there was far more going on in the eighties than I noticed, and a lot of it I have to admit I adored…what can I say I was a fish in water. The resurging interest in the eighties has been going on for a while, as happens when we get jaded with future promises and see that the past we were trying to rise above wasn’t that bad. Except for the clothes. Man, eighties styles were horrible.
But enough with my aimless pondering. On with more relevant material!
I don’t know how it came to be that I missed The Hunger. I’ve seen it on the shelf since I was a kid and have always been intrigued by it for some reason, but I’d never watched it. So, finally, I picked it up the other day. It felt like the meeting of some long distant ideas that were about to engage and come to fruition. I must have waited for a reason…and now I would find out why! Yeah…okay.
This film is so 80’s it’s scary. If you think of the 80’s and imagine big business, power suits, lots of overpowering geometric shapes, and of course that dark neo-goth underbelly that was the ‘wildness’ of the 80’s…then you have The Hunger.
Atmosphere is the main character of this film. If the filmmakers did anything right it was to create an atmosphere trapped between the modern and the antiquated, between vitality and decay. This is accomplished with many beautifully composed shots, which capture the grayness and haze of a kind of eternal and ever receding present. Characters are captured in moments of timeless reverie that are disarming. Bowie looks especially striking in a few scenes.
Unfortunately, what I described above isn’t consistent enough to carry the film, which seems to teeter between greatness and mediocrity. There are more than enough laughable scenes, or just plain horrible ones to dilute the overall effect of this film. One thing came to mind as I watched scenes get bogged down: overkill. Lots of sensational, in your face moments that went on and on and on…very deliberate and cheesy as hell. But what to expect from Tony Scott?
The story of an ancient vampire, we’re talking Egyptian times old, is fresh, as is the twist on the dark gothic romance. The story can be touching and very deep at times, but again there are enough crappy moments to trample on the good stuff.
Something does stick with me from this film though. I don’t know if the filmmakers were trying to do too much or what, but sometimes it feels like he Hunger was getting somewhere. Overall it’s a film about ‘hunger’ in many forms, and I think these themes are explored quite subtly at times. The filmmakers were obviously trying to tie in the 80’s ideology and it’s grim progress, but it doesn’t quite come off. I’ll have to find Whitley Strieber’s book to see if he tackled this idea with more skill.
Overall, I'd have to say that the cheese wins out with this one, though it had potential to be something worthwhile.
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