Nadja - the disappointing

Some horror films are too bad for words. Most are kind of fun. Some are romantic (I'd put Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu in that category, though many people would think I'm a sicko to say that). A few are genuinely scary (Don't Look Now). Then there are a few that make a valiant attempt to be both romantic and scary, and end up being depressing. David Lynch's Nadja is one such. I never thought I'd give up on a David Lynch film half way, but after getting the DVD out of the library with such high hopes, I switched it off after less than an hour.

This is disturbing - I mean David Lynch doesn't make bad films, does he? I know Dune was a terrible disappointment to many, but if you forget that it's a film by David Lynch based on a novel by Frank Herbert, it's actually quite enjoyable. Now maybe Lynch was trying to make a depressing film, to show that vampirism isn't the glamorous thing other films tell us it is. But it's still weak. Giving the modern characters the same names as characters in the Bram Stoker novel isn't clever, it's just silly. And making films in black and white these days is just an excuse for directors to show off the cinematographic skills they don't have.

As for the reviews quoted on the cover, who are you trying to fool? "Truly hot! Sex and moviemaking of the unsafest sort" (L.A. Weekly). Come on! Like, there's two women kissing, and you see one of them put her fingers at least an inch inside the other's jeans. Gasp.

I also got really upset when Van Helsing killed Lucy's pet tarantula.