Theres this line that gets tossed around by directors who have made highbrow horror films (you know, the kind released by A24 and Annapurna that purport to rely heavily on atmosphere over schlocky scares). Youll frequently hear these directors say that they never really thought of the story theyre telling as a horror film, that its actually a dark family drama or a coming-of-age tale or some wordy bull that means nothing because they desperately want to be taken seriously. It seems to stem from this line of thinking that art and horror are mutually exclusive, so the directors feel the need to sort of remove themselves and by default the story theyve made from the genre even if the movie theyve made is deeply entrenched in said genre (shoutout A Quiet Place and Hereditary).
And hey, to be fair, many of these movies are quite good. But this mindset implies that horror is, at best, cheap popcorn fare and that anything that comes from a place of humanity is, by default, not aligned with the genre. This is, of course, a garbage mindset. Horror and genre storytelling as a whole is and has always been a rich world containing stories that tackle subject matters mainstream art cinema is often afraid of breaching.
So please dont yell at me when I say that The Hunger isnt really a horror movie.
Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in The Hunger. (Les Predateurs), directed by Tony Scott. (Photo Credit: STILLS / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
To be fair, I dont think it ever tries to be not in the sense that it tries not to be the way that something like Hereditary does but in that being a horror film isnt at any point really the intent. The Hunger is that rare movie about vampires that only ever-so-lightly delves into the macabre or the lore surrounding vamps that weve been conditioned to expect. Thats not to say theres any lack of refreshing takes on vampires, mind you. Its simply to say that even films that attempt to defy or even lampoon convention like What We Do In the Shadows or wait for it Twilight do so while working within or around the confines of vampire lore.
The Hunger seems largely uninterested in this. The creatures in the film are never explicitly referred to as vampires and they only have the most base-level traits necessary to portray vampirism: drink blood, live forever. We regularly see them walking around outdoors. There are no bits surrounding garlic or flight or reflections. And when we do see them feeding on blood, its largely cut around footage of animals feasting or edited so quickly and shot so tightly that we dont see much of the traditional throat-biting.
It all begs the question: why make a vampire movie if you dont seem to have any interest in making a vampire movie? Sure, vampires are cool and most movies could be improved by adding them to the narrative, but a lesser director than Tony Scott taking the approach he utilizes in The Hunger likely would have stumbled here.
Scotts initial strength as the director of The Hunger comes in the utter clarity with which the film conveys its themes. This isnt to say that it doesnt allow room for interpretation or doesnt contain layered ideas but rather that Scott is skilled enough a director to convey what his story is about without ever explicitly spelling it out with gaudy exposition. Many have interpreted The Hunger as an addiction allegory (the idea being that the compromise to vampirism and a life eternal is living that life eternal as an addict, with blood being the drug of choice). Its totally valid explicit, even. But personally, watching The Hunger was watching a cautionary tale about the baggage we bring into relationships.
The first 45 minutes or so center on two vampires, Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (the appropriately immortal David Bowie). Theyre a seemingly loving couple who live in a posh New York townhouse and give classical music lessons. Miriam is the vampire who turned John, promising him eternal youth and a never-ending love between the two. This idyllic (if not a little sinister) relationship is compromised when John starts aging rapidly. Like, years within minutes. Its quickly revealed that John is not Miriams first lover and that she lures them in not with the promise of eternal life but the lie of eternal youth. After a couple hundred years, Miriams lovers rapidly age and dont stop. Unable to die they morph into decrepit walking corpses and no amount of blood can restore their youth. Rather than put them out of their misery, Miriam traps them in coffins and keeps them stored beneath her home.
Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in The Hunger. (Photo Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures / Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty Images)
The second half of the film follows Miriams new romance with a doctor named Sarah (Susan Sarandon), only this time it becomes clear early on that a white picket fence lifestyle isnt in the cards for them. Miriam lures Susan into her bed with deception and doesnt receive her consent before turning her. Horrified by the prospect of living a life sustained by drinking human blood, Sarah attacks Miriam and leaves her in the basement, but not before releasing Miriams Legion of Exes to take their revenge.
All in all, its not entirely unconventional a vampire tale. What sets it apart from its predecessors is the way Scott tells it. Its easy to forget, especially considering his relatively sterile later work, but Scott is a director obsessed with capturing aesthetic beauty to the point of his work being extraordinarily sexually charged. This is, if you will recall, the guy who went on to make Top Gun into an unintentional masterpiece of queer cinema. Consequently, The Hunger is an almost overwhelmingly beautiful film never more so than when Scott is focused on his lovely, young lead actors. The sequences of physical intimacy are shot and edited so precisely and framed in such an intentional fashion that whether that physical intimacy is out-and-out sex or even something as mild as the characters playing music together, theres an undeniable eroticism to the action.
The Hunger Blue-ray (Photo Credit: WB Archive Shop)
Its this visual flair and Scotts penchant for the erotic that clarifies the need for vampires to tell what is otherwise a raw human drama. In his visually exuberant work Scott shows us the constant high Miriam promises her lovers. Its what she lives for but something that is frequently compromised by her lovers degradation. So she handles it about as immaturely as someone whos had literal thousands of years to learn better could: rather than grow, rather than recognize the destructive nature of her self-centered need to maintain the high, she quite literally buries her skeletons in the closet and hopes they wont find their way out. When theyre finally set free, its been too long and their numbers are too great. They consume her.
You cant tell a story like this without vampires, without immortal beings who must do something inhuman to maintain something ultimately superficial, without the fictional creatures most often associated with themes of youth, sexuality, and moral compromise. The Hunger is a scary film. Its just not scary in the ways wed expect a film about vampires to be. Rather than jump scares and gore, Scotts vampiric fable aims to frighten us by showing us the ways selfishness can rot our souls and the lives we destroy if we refuse to interrogate our flaws and try to change.
Vintage Shelf on Geek.com offers recommendations inspired by long-beloved and long-forgotten classics of cinema. Twice a month, well take a look at some of those movies and see how they hold up and what they mean today.
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