Immortality; aka, The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998) features a vampire of a different stripe. He feeds off of a loving lifeforce, so must slowly seduce & completely win the love of each victim.

As vampires go, he is not a bad man, & the sincerity of his own love means he suffers by having to kill to survive. But he is immortal only if he meets his special feeding requirement; without victims taken at the height of their ecstasy, he would himself perish.

Vampire movies are a dime a dozen, but really good ones are rare. This is one of the rarities, quiet, sorrowful, spooky. This vampire is played with disarming sweetness by Jude Law.

His current victim-in-progress is played by Elina Lowensohn, intelligent, tough, & easy for even a predator to admire.

To spice up the story, a police detective (Timothy Spall) has Jude's seductive character in his line of vision as a potential serial killer, & this parallel story is as involving as the sinister love affair.

Ennui & loneliness & self-loathing for the monster he cannot help but be, Jude's character is vulnerable due to his own state of mind.

Whether from guilt, or from experiencing for once authentic love, he waits too long to make his next kill, knowing how badly he will miss her.

Torn between his nature & his gentle decency, his nature takes over only when he is so weakened that it may already be too late.

The director of the surreal creeper Darkling (2000) has given us a strange, pretty film with sympathy for everyone. Not even the vampire wants his girlfriend to be killed, so we sure don't. But we cannot help but embrace this very sympathetic monster & we want him to survive. No matter the ending, it can only be bleak.

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Frostbitten (2006)

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