In a few (borrowed) words: It's Horrible...I Love It...What Is It?
In a few more words: I've always wanted to re-watch this one. I saw it ages ago on TV, in fullscreen, and found it rather weird and a bit boring.
So many years later I felt like finding out if it was as great as some people say or as bas as... some other people say. I can't exactly say my conclusions differ much from my previous ones. Yes, on paper "The hunger" looks great. It has a perfect cast, an intringuing love triangle setup and gorgeous visuals that sit comfortably between the beautiful, the kitsch and the downright weird.
But then, it doesn't have much of a script. Stuff happens. Sometimes very, very slowly. Too slowly. And we don't get much of an explanation on how the whole issue of inmortality works, except that it gets very badly if your lover starts losing interest on you.
So the best and the worst thing that could ever happen to this film were to end in the hands of Tony Scott. He does create some striking visuals. The opening of the film, intercutting a Bauhaus performance with the presentation of the main characters is wonderful. But as the film progresses Scott seems more worried about giving the film a glossy look than anything else, and little by little his camerawork and trademark stylisms become suffocating and irritating.
So, is it a bad film? Not necessarily. As the review at Amazon suggests, "The hunger" is exactly what vampire films needed in the 80s. A film that portrayed them as exquisitely decadent, sexually adventurous (or just careless?) and, yes, vapid and superficial. And Tony Scott was certainly the best man for the job.