Film Review: HABIT

In my opinion, Love on the rebound is hard on the soul.

In the 1997 independent feature HABIT, this point is illustrated with a benign supernatural twist.

In HABIT, we meet Sam, a down on his luck, alcoholic drifter who has just lost his father whom he was estranged from and broken up with his live in girlfriend Liza.
On the rebound, and down on his luck, he meets Anna. Anna is nocturnal, sexual and full of blood lust. She and Sam have sex almost immediately after they meet each other (during which she bites his lip, dips her finger in the bite and sucks his blood).

Overtime, certain physical changes happen to Sam and he becomes further withdrawn from his friends and his ex Liza and the real world. He begins to feel like he is losing his mind, and when he tries to end things with Anna--well that doesn't go over well with Anna (did I mention she was aggressive and slightly possessive too).

Sam and Anna are played by Larry Fessenden and Meredith Snaider, respectively. They exhibit raw physical chemistry together on screen. It is very powerful. And a little confusing. Sam, with one tooth missing, bad hair, and less than Olympiad build is not America's Man's man. A guy like this would be lucky to have anyone in reality, let alone the mysterious and beautiful Anna. He is moody, and emotionally distant, and Anna wakes him up.

They are a mismatched pair and for story purposes it works.

Each encounter changes Sam and alters his perceptions a little bit at a time. His drug of choice becomes Anna, whose every bite is as addicting as sex. Anna's hold over Sam is parasitic, but is she (as Sam begins to suspect) a vampire? You never really know the answer to that question.

I liked this movie, because so much is left to the imagination of the viewer. And being on the rebound is something anyone (yes even I, ha ha) can relate to. You just want to cling to something or someone sometimes and fill a void left by the other person or thing that you lost.

So, if you can handle the almost porn like sex scenes, and plot holes, (like why did Liza and Sam really break up and does Anna actually kill her?) you might just enjoy this film.

You might develop a taste for it. That will become like a habit.