Wir sind die Nacht [We are the Night] (2010)

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) Vampiric hedonism meets the Berlin nightclub scene in We are the Night, as writer-director Dennis Gansel explores the adventures of a young woman who gets bitten, then befriended by a trio of female vampires even as a tenacious police officer closes in on her. While partially original, this is a film that plays into a very familiar pool of references. The vampiric powers are the classic ones, which either mean we’re on comfortable ground or that the narrative runs real risks of repeating itself. Putting the action in modern-day Berlin doesn’t make much of a change, and the film’s themes don’t necessarily bring anything new to the mythos. (Even the female focus is not that new.) On the one hand, We are the Night doesn’t specifically do anything wrong. But on the other, it struggles to distinguish itself from a flood of other, better vampires in the genre’s very long history.