Night Junkies (2007)

Very well executed

not as good as all the hype

Absolutely amazing

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

In London, Vincent Monroe (Giles Alderson) is a young man addicted in blood that wanders through the red light district looking for lonely people to satisfy his addiction, dropping their bodies in the Thames River. When the stripper Ruby Stone (Katia Winter) meets Vincent in a coffee shop after her show, they immediately fall in love with each other. They have one night stand and Vincent does not resist and bites Ruby's neck, freaking her out. Ruby leaves his apartment and returns to the night-club, where the psycho pimp (René Zagger) that is obsessed on her harasses her. Vincent finds Ruby fainted in an alley and soon she discovers that Vincent has turned her into a vampire. Ruby convinces Vincent to stop drinking human blood and seek out a cure in Edinburgh. But the sadistic psycho, who has killed fifteen women, has discovered their address and is stalking Ruby."Night Junkies" is an original low-budget vampire movie, where vampires are not supernatural beings but creatures compared to junkies addicted in blood. The film is very erotic, developed in low pace with a dark cinematography, but the story is attractive, entwining horror, romance and drama. I only do not understand why there are so many unnecessary fake reviews giving 10 out of 10 to promote "Night Junkies". My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Criaturas da Noite" ("Night Creatures")

Night Junkies is set in London where thirteen prostitutes have been brutally murdered & a killer is on the loose, against this backdrop of fear lap dancer Ruby Stone (Katia Winter) works in a strip club. While walking home one morning she meets a guy named Vincent Monroe (Giles Alderson) & she ends up going back to his flat & having sex with him. Unfortunately for Ruby Vincent happens to be a Vampire addicted to human blood & one bite from him infects her with the addiction. Afterwards not much else happens actually as Ruby has to come to terms with what she has become...This British production was written, executive produced & directed Lawrence Pearce & I thought it was total crap to put it bluntly. As usual for these low budget pieces of crap the IMDb comments section seem to be overrun with users proclaiming it to be the best film ever & handing out 9 & 10 out of 10 star ratings which always make me wonder whether we have seen the same film or whether these users have other agenda's for trying to big certain films up. Anyway I throughly believe that if you were to take 100 random people off the street & showed them Night Junkies the majority of them would struggle to get through it & there certainly wouldn't be many 9 or 10 out of 10's handed out. For those who claim Night Junkies is original & a fresh take on the Vampire genre obviously haven't watched films like George A. Romero's modern take on Vampire lore Martin (1977) which was made three decades before Night Junkies & just about any Vampire film ever made deals with a central romance between a Vampire & a woman he falls for that goes right back to Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel while the whole 'hidden knife in the tip of a shoe' is ripped-off from the James Bond flick From Russia with Love (1963) & that was made nearly forty five years ago. I suppose that the makers have tried to make Night Junkies relevant in todays society & as it's title suggests it portrays the Vampires in this the same as drug addicts which is where the term 'junkie' actually comes from. From moralising about leaving dead bodies for people to find & making the comparison between drug addicts leaving their syringes lying around to the process of going Cold Turkey to dealing with the Vampire issue in a very cold & clinical way constantly making reference to real life drug addicts. The plot sucks, the dialogue is forgettable (although there's a nice little speech on farts) there's some crap about a killer Vampire that ends in a duller than dull climax & there's a fair bit of romance as Vincent & Ruby try to support each other & fall for each other & the pace is very slow with little going on to maintain ones interest, well mine anyway.The start of the film is alright as it's set amongst the seedy London world of strip clubs & prostitution but this is all but abandoned by the half way mark at which point Night Junkies becomes an absolute bore & I personally started to read my newspaper listening to the soundtrack & occasionally peeking at the screen to follow what was going on & I still felt bored. There's no gore or special effects to speak of, there's a bit of fake blood but that's it. The Vampires don't have fangs & Night Junkies presents them as real people just with an addiction for blood which begs the question why don't they feed on animal blood? At least then they wouldn't have to kill anyone. There's some nudity during the first half but that really can't save it.According to the IMDb this had a budget of about £405,000 which isn't as low budget as one might think, that's nearly half a million quid which is a lot make no mistake & considering that there's no special effects, no star names or action & a small cast I am not overly impressed. The cast of no-one I have ever heard of before make no impact & are fairly poor.Night Junkies is a film that bored me to tears, I thought it was a basic boring piece of crap the only interest being the London red light district it sets itself in during the first half. A boring 100 odd minutes that you can live without seeing.

I'm not saying this is a bad flick, but if you miss this you haven't missed a thing. Jude Law's "Immortal" is far better and far more interesting to look at. Abel Ferrara made "The Addiction" in 1995, which seems to have "inspired" this one. So non Bram Stoker - Hammer Horror vampires are hardly an original concept. It is a brutal, ugly movie made up with stock characters: the hooker with a heart of gold, the unwilling blood addict, the psycho, punk kids, and totally non present police. I mean there is a crime wave of hookers being brutally murdered ala Jack the Ripper, yet not even a stock bobby trying to restore order.Mining the seedy underworld of strip joints and prostitution in Dickens like modern London, which seems to be old dark alleys, is nothing we haven't seen before. Mining drug addiction with intelligent but routine observation about addiction that one can find at any 12 Step meeting or a hundred horrors of drug movie is hardly inspiring. Ditto for non traditional vampires. So there is nothing groundbreaking or original in this movie. I saw bits and pieces of previous films spliced into this one. So it is hard to pretend this is something brave and new that is going to knock your socks off. It is full off some really brutal violence, though nothing exceptional by today's standards and the sexuality is there and is probably the only redeeming feature of the flick, Tarantino like dialog is routine too these days. Just cut and paste some lines in MS Word and viola! This is an indy movie as far as improvisation, location shots and low budgets go, but at heart it is a cheap exploitation flick with plenty of brutal violence, psycho behavior and some soft core sex thrown in to pander to sophistos by glossing it over with a patina of some intelligent dialog. In my book, if you shoot for some intelligent and arty effect but end up being mainly ugly, common, derivative and brutal, then you are better off just watching some mindless Alien tear them apart type flick or some cheesy Hammer high Goth vampire flick cause at least you be getting an honest product.

Night Junkies proves that original vampire movies aren't as dead as you may think. Focussing on the character's addictions, it provides us with a different take on a genre, which has been lacking in recent times.Without giving too much away, Giles Alderson plays a convincing Vincent, a vampire who happens upon a lap dancer named Ruby, played by Katia Winter. Yes, I know it may seem difficult to just 'happen upon' a lap dancer, but they actually meet in a cafe, rather than a club and fall for each other. As the story unfolds, we follow the two main characters as they fight against their addiction for blood and there is a good back story of Ruby's father, a heroin addict, which provides a nice mirror for Ruby's new addiction and her reasons to fight it. They are hunted by 'Psycho', who has a few secrets of his own and is played convincingly (Too convincingly???) by Rene Zagger. Successfully ignoring much of the vampire Mythology, we have no fangs here (Look for a great scene, where Ruby checks her teeth in the mirror), no garlic, no holy water. A stake through the heart or bullet in the head will kill, but then, that would kill anyone right? Set in the back streets on London, Lawrence Pearce's vision of life as a night junkie, mixes the sensual, haunting life of Vincent, with the rather more sexual background of Ruby, producing a film charged with both.This is Lawrence's first 'flick' and there should be many more to come on the strength of this. Hopefully Night Junkies will get the recognition it deserves, paving the way for Night Junkies 2 and restoring our faith in dark, edgy vampire movies.All in all a great movie, make sure you get to see it.