Vampire’s Kiss Review

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We watched Vampire’s Kiss on Vudu and it was a delightful window into the soul of one of the most impressive, interesting, and entertaining actors of our age, Nic Cage.

Synopsis

Publishing executive Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) is bitten by a woman and starts acting erratically. Believing that he is being controlled by his vampire mistress puts a great deal of stress and pressure on Peter.

As he deals with the stress of this new vampire relationship, Peter leans more and more heavily on his poor secretary, Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso). 

As Peter’s madness evolves, it becomes questionable to the audience exactly what is real and what is Peter’s rapidly devolving mental state.

Everyone gets more Nicolas Cage than they bargained for.

Review

Vampire’s Kiss is an anomaly of a movie. It’s not exactly a terrifying horror movie due to the strong overtones of comedy within Cage’s performance. On the other hand it’s not exactly a feel good romp due to the very serious mental decline of Peter, our protagonist turned antagonist and extremely unreliable narrator.

It’s a dark comedy that will delight those who want to be taken on a crazy ride. 

Vampire’s Kiss strongest feature is the insane performance given by Nic Cage. He creates such a believably crazy character that you can’t help but remember bumping into people just like him on public transportation and wondering, what is their life like.

The best part is, you get to see what his life is like. It’s touched, tragic, and totally bonkers.

I can’t help but feel like writer Joseph Minion spent some time on the New York subway watching mentally disturbed people and began posing the question to himself, “what brought that person to this unfortunate place? What was their life like before and during their transition into madness?”

This is pretty much the only notable directing credit that director Robert Bierman has, and that astonishes me. It’s such a weirdly enjoyable movie and shares so much in common with one of my favorite movies of all time, American Psycho that I can’t help but see all the inspiration that Vampire’s Kiss has given to more recent dark comedy movies.

Score

8/10