"Wir sind die Nacht" or "We Are the Night" is a film written and directed by Dennis Gansel starring some of Germany's most talented actors currently. Nina Hoss, Jennifer Ulrich and Anna Fischer play a trio of vampires with Karoline Herfurth playing their newest member and Max Riemelt being the love interest to Herfurth's character. Gansel worked with Herfurth in the past already and she and Riemelt appeared in his film "Mädchen, Mädchen!", a lighter teenage comedy movie. 3th time already that Riemelt appeared in a Gansel film and a 5th time happened not long after "Wir sind die Nacht". As Gansel is currently attempting to make an impact in Hollywood with upcoming films starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Alba, Jason Statham and Tommy Lee Jones, we will see how that goes. Good luck to him. His most famous film so far is probably "Die Welle".
"Wir sind die Nacht" scored German Film Award nominations for the music (maybe my favorite part of the film and the editing. The central character of the film is a loner girl who gets turned into a vampire and all this while she gets closer to a cop investigating the deaths committed by the vampire trio. I thought all 3 female vampires are pretty interesting for what they are. One of them suicidal, fairly distant and not too obvious with her feelings, another the exact opposite and pretty much a best friend to the central character and seemingly a normal girl, but still ruthless as we saw in the swimming pool scene and finally the leader of the gang, a tall blonde with authority, who has grown emotionally cold towards humans. Her comment about the smell of death in the retirement tells us a lot about her. Hoss' character has been a vampire for so long that humans mean nothing to her anymore except means for survival. As she plays the mother role to Herfurth's character, she does not seem so evil initially and of course she manages to impress her new protégé being the tough independent woman that she is, at least for a while, and make her feel home. I quite liked the transformation scene in the bathtub.
However, things go south quickly. Watching one of her new "friends" lose her love interest, she realizes it all sucks pretty much, even if Hoss' character tries all to let them think otherwise. There is some strangely funny scenes in the film, like the "smoking not allowed" reference at the restaurant. What I was not too fond of in this film was the love story with the cop. First of all, I am yet to see a Riemelt performance where he truly blows me away, but I also just found all the vampire-related stuff more interesting. The 4 female characters were also more fascinating to watch than the kind of stereotypical cop how they act and how they are all pretty different. I did like the open ending though. I admit it would have been pretty difficult to include a non-open ending and make it convincing. This way here everybody can make up his mind for themselves how the two continue their relationship and if it works out.
If this is the German, darker approach to the Twilight franchise, then they mostly did a good job. I would not say it is better than Twilight at its best, but all in all I enjoyed what I saw during these 100 minutes. And of course, Nina Hoss has excellent screen presence as always and Herfurth is not far behind. Recommended.
"Wir sind die Nacht" scored German Film Award nominations for the music (maybe my favorite part of the film and the editing. The central character of the film is a loner girl who gets turned into a vampire and all this while she gets closer to a cop investigating the deaths committed by the vampire trio. I thought all 3 female vampires are pretty interesting for what they are. One of them suicidal, fairly distant and not too obvious with her feelings, another the exact opposite and pretty much a best friend to the central character and seemingly a normal girl, but still ruthless as we saw in the swimming pool scene and finally the leader of the gang, a tall blonde with authority, who has grown emotionally cold towards humans. Her comment about the smell of death in the retirement tells us a lot about her. Hoss' character has been a vampire for so long that humans mean nothing to her anymore except means for survival. As she plays the mother role to Herfurth's character, she does not seem so evil initially and of course she manages to impress her new protégé being the tough independent woman that she is, at least for a while, and make her feel home. I quite liked the transformation scene in the bathtub.
However, things go south quickly. Watching one of her new "friends" lose her love interest, she realizes it all sucks pretty much, even if Hoss' character tries all to let them think otherwise. There is some strangely funny scenes in the film, like the "smoking not allowed" reference at the restaurant. What I was not too fond of in this film was the love story with the cop. First of all, I am yet to see a Riemelt performance where he truly blows me away, but I also just found all the vampire-related stuff more interesting. The 4 female characters were also more fascinating to watch than the kind of stereotypical cop how they act and how they are all pretty different. I did like the open ending though. I admit it would have been pretty difficult to include a non-open ending and make it convincing. This way here everybody can make up his mind for themselves how the two continue their relationship and if it works out.
If this is the German, darker approach to the Twilight franchise, then they mostly did a good job. I would not say it is better than Twilight at its best, but all in all I enjoyed what I saw during these 100 minutes. And of course, Nina Hoss has excellent screen presence as always and Herfurth is not far behind. Recommended.