We Are The Night Review
Germany takes a crack at the modern vampire myth with this slick tale set in urban society. We are introduced to street thief Lena (not aping a certain character from a certain Millennium franchise at all!) who finds herself on the run from the coppers, but taken in by a vampire sisterhood.
As Lena adjusts to her new lifestyle as a creature of the night, the film does raise interesting questions for each of the female leads. The caricatures are fairly expected. There is the bubbly hyper Manga-esque Nora, the depressed older than her years Charlotte (although to be fair they all are older than they look), and then the calm collected leader Louise, who under the skin is a bit of a control freak.
The idea may be to show that how this world may well be appealing at first, but when murder and loyalty are called into question things naturally start to fall apart for this sisterhood.
The trouble is despite some of their lengthy life spans you’d think they’d find a better way to live life than to hang out at Raves? They may look young, but it is doubtful that anyone of such an age would want to hang out at drug and alcohol fuelled nightclubs on a nightly basis. And it’s this cliché that stops We Are The Night from becoming anything new.
The performances are fine, and some of the character strands have some dramatic appeal, but with perhaps a more mature mind behind the screenplay there could have been an infinitely wider appeal to the drama.
Steven Hurst