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dcox10
Reviews
Habit (1995)
A slightly different take on the vampire theme in which the protagonist might be imagining that his lover is a vampire and the lover might be imagining that she is a vampire.
I'll try to be very brief. I think Fessenden could have made a much better movie if he had paid a little more attention to its narrative flow. Film is not medium in which everything that happens on the screen needs to be explained to the viewer. I do think, however, that a director and screenwriter (and to a lesser extent the actors) need to be make an effort to maintain a degree of narrative coherence for the sake of maintaining a connection with the audience.
When the characters Rae and Anna, for example, simply disappear from Rae's grandmother's property on Thanksgiving night their absence is tantalizing because of the sexual tension between them and the question of whether Anna is or is not a vampire. If Anna is a vampire she might have attacked and killed Rae and then, perhaps, fearing discovery returned to New York. Or, she might have returned to the house and the next morning, when everyone was awake, claimed that she had left Rae outside and returned to the house alone.
What Fessenden chooses to do instead is quite odd. The following morning he lets the camera tell us that the two women are not in the house; in fact, he allows the camera to intimate that something unsettling or dreadful has probably happened. The two men, Seth and Nick, sort of stumble around the house babbling incoherently about the fact that the women had not come back to the house. Nick sort of speculates that they probably took the train back to New York. He and and Seth clean up the house and drive back to the city.
At this point I decided that Fessenden was either being too coy or he had lost touch with reality. In other words, the director, screenwriter and lead actor had become confused about who was responsible for doing what. Having two main characters, one of whom might be a vampire, simply disappear into the woods on a full moon night and their boyfriends/ husbands aren't greatly alarmed the next morning is a bit of stretch. Days later both women reappear but, by then, I had stopped caring.