The Hunger

I’ve seen almost all movies where the plot is queer female vampire seduces innocent female mortal. I love almost all of them but The Hunger is the only one to make my list of all time best WLW movies. What makes The Hunger better than all the rest? David fucking Bowie.

If you only care about the queer lady aspects of these reviews, please skip ahead a little because I need to gush about the immortal, space travelling lizard person that is David Bowie. David Bowie is great in this. He plays Catherine Deneuve’s mortal lover who is kept young through her blood but his time runs out and he starts rapidly aging in the first act. I’m really impressed with his performance here. Bowie really made me feel this sort of panic of not only his sudden lack of desirability to the woman who he loves who also sustains him but increasingly his sense of impending doom. He gives a really affecting, chilling and emotional performance that’s the best I’ve seen from him. I’m also impressed how he managed to tone down his whole Bowie-ness and not steal the show from Deneuve too much or clash with the tone of the movie.

After Bowie starts to age, he visits Dr. Susan Sarandon who’s a dermatologist who he hopes can help him. She cannot and Bowie eventually ages so much that he becomes little more than a skeleton though still conscious. One of the creepiest scenes in the movie comes when Catherine Deneuve’s vampiric character Miriam places him in a coffin in a room full of all her other lovers who have had the same fate. That’s a great addition to the vampire myth and really scary.

Once David Bowie is not sexy anymore, Miriam sets her sights on Susan Sarandon and uses her vampire seduction powers to enthrall her. This plot line is pretty similar to every other queer vampire movie. It separates itself by being a little more slick and having a little more budget than usual. It’s a much tighter story than a lot of WLW vampire films which tend to meander around just being bloody and/or sexy and forgetting to do things like plot.

Unlike most of the innocent mortals in these movies, Susan Sarandon does not turn to the dark side of immortality, blood drinking and scissoring but instead fights back against Miriam and what she represents in the third act. Ultimately though, the victory in The Hunger belongs to skeleton David Bowie. He leads Miriam’s other past lovers in a skele-uprising. That should be the third act climax of every single movie bar none.

This movie is fucking great. It’s got vampires, WLW and David Bowie. It’s atmospheric, creepy and overall fucking brilliant. The last scene is a bit disappointing because there’s a lame bit of sequel bait but I can live with that because the film overall is so damn quality. If you’re going to watch just one WLW vampire movie, first of all, I can’t relate to you; we have nothing in common. Second of all, make that movie The Hunger.

Overall rating: 9.1/10

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