This movie is not for everyone, but there is a big chance that you will enjoy it if you like pieces such as Only Lovers Left Alive, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Twin Peaks, Interview With the Vampire and Suspiria. There is a decadent and charming aura throughout the whole picture, which means VAMPIRE (really, in caps) for me. It mixes sensuality, suspense, dispair, and melancholy into a darkness that composes beautiful photography with the cold pale skins and lusty red blood. Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie deliver outstanding performances. Some scenes, unfortunately, are a little too long, even knowing they are supposed to be that slow. The visual effects are incredible, specially in the monkey scene. I can say the same about the aging makeup... Perfect. It is absolutely sad to see such a beautiful Bowie fade away so quickly. 10/10

So, this is barely a horror movie, and hardly a vampire movie. The first hour is a very slow build, and the end kicks into horror all at once. If I were a fan of style over substance, I'd love this - the lighting is amazing, and the camera work is fabulous - trouble is I'm not and I didn't. I was just bored. The movie starts out like a Bauhaus music video, and by that, I mean Bauhaus is playing a song. Really. I had high expectations from there, figuring I was in for a fun, '80s, gothic vampire movie. Nothing of the sort. This almost reminds me of the eurotrash movies from Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco; the difference being, they knew how to add enough sleaze to make the ride enjoyable. We get to see a young Willem Dafoe, in what may have been his first film role. It's bad when that was the only exciting moment for me. Really good makeup effects here, but the story is almost nonexistent. _The Hunger_ has the feel of a movie adapted from a long book, but all the important parts were cut out for "art." I could understand fans defending this tooth and nail, the same way I would defend _Begotten_ or _Naked Lunch_, but I thought this was a huge waste of time.

Cool cinematography. Plot line meh

Tony Scott’s big-league directorial debut looks and feels like the work of a talented artist who hadn’t quite cracked the secrets of the medium. It starts off with a bang, portraying an enthusiastic Bauhaus concert in a trendy goth club that’s entirely populated by tall, pale, awkward-looking gloom cookies. The type of forever-trench-coated folk who haven’t seen the sun in years, now feeling relaxed and at home amidst a mess of chains, cages, fog and like-minded peers. David Bowie is there, coolly observing from the darkest parts of the shadows! David Bowie is taking an attractive young woman back to his place! David Bowie is going to score! That’s pretty much the climax, as _The Hunger_’s mood, style and story all begin to spiral and fade afterwards. Bowie turns out to be a vampire, held in thrall of a much older woman (as in, older than Christ), but his version of everlasting life carries a snag. When he begins rapidly aging, growing a couple hundred years’ worth of wrinkles over breakfast, he seeks help from a specialist (Susan Sarandon) who dismisses him as a crazy before falling into the same trap herself. This is all conveyed via a cryptic series of somber chats and quick-hit flashbacks, so hollow and spacious I had to flip on the subtitles to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Nope; the juice of this plot is often merely implied, on those occasions where it’s provided at all. Very little of the third act makes any sense, no matter how hard you’ve been paying attention. That means, for the most part, _The Hunger _is a lot of flash and a lack of substance, although not even those stylish, attractive surface elements last until the end. While the visual getting’s good, it represents a nice melding of film noir compositions and gothic themes. A ball lifted from the stiff fingers of Murnau and Wagner’s _Nosferatu_, dribbled for an hour and then meekly cast aside. There were messages worth pursuing here, ideas that could’ve moved the genre in exciting new directions. Instead, it manages little more than vague shapes and disregarded possibility. Not even a steamy lesbian love scene can compensate for that.

Somewhere behind the screen of noisy Manhattan of the 80s, bloodsuckers spend their melancholic leisure time in mansions, however, not really hiding from people. Whom they of course use like cattle, but in an impeccable decadent-sensual style. Ah, they also thirst for love, but there is only hunger! Beautiful, but boring