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<p>There's like, what, 500 vampire films released every year, and so its hard to make one that really sticks out from the frey. <i>Nadja</i> definitely distinguishes itself among vamp flicks, but for reasons which will probably turn off most vampire fans. <b>Michael Almereyda</b>'s <i>Nadja</i>, you see, is a slow moving, cerebral indie film, more in the vein of <b>Hal Hartley</b> and <b>Jim Jarmusch</b> than <b>Wes Craven</b> or <b>Lucio Fulci</b>, so viewers who are expecting to see a vampire action flick are going to be sorely disappointed. This movie is all atmosphere, and therein lie both its strengths and weaknesses. </p>
<p>I mean it does atmosphere well, and the whole independent film grainy black and white thing works to set the mood, although the vampire-cam, filmed with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera, is only cool about half the time but annoyed the hell out of me the other half. The images of both New York and Romania (which I doubt were shot in Romania) are all fairly powerful, and the use of sound is pretty clever throughout the film. I was also glad to hear lots of <b>My Bloody Valentine</b> in the soundtrack, but my personal <b>Portishead </b>saturation point got hit pretty early on. </p>
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