Writer/actor/director Larry Fessenden has been a steady presence in filmmaking for several decades now. Whether appearing in other people’s projects (Bringing Out the Dead; Good Boy), writing them (Until Dawn), or making them himself (Wendigo; The ABCs of Death 2), the creative storyteller can be found exploring the liminal space between reality and fantasy as a means of better understanding the lived experience. Fassenden’s own Habit began as a short in 1982 which he then adapted into a feature that released in 1997. It’s the story of a compulsive man at a crossroads in his life from which return may be impossible told through a vampiric lens. This film would end up being the first of a series of monster movies Fessenden would make over the years with Depraved (2019) tackling The Creature and Blackout (2023) utilizing the werewolf myth. In celebration of Fessenden’s newest project, Trauma Or, Monsters All, a standalone title from the director, each predecessor monster story (Habit, Depraved, and Blackout) screened during Overlook 2026 as part of a retrospective.
L-R: Meredith Snaider as Anna and Larry Fessenden as Sam in HABIT. Photo courtesy of Glass Eye Pix.
Sam (Fassenden) is in a period of transition. Not only has his father died recently; his girlfriend, Liza (Heather Woodbury), has moved out. She’s doing it in hopes of saving their relationship, whereas he sees it as another ending. While attending a Halloween party at his close friends’ Rae and Nick’s apartment (Patricia Coleman and Aaron Beall, respectively), he meets the mysterious Anna (Meredith Snaider) with whom he’s immediately taken and equally loses track of. But when she resurfaces in his life unexpectedly, the two begin a whirlwind affair that creates horrifying reverberations throughout Sam’s life.
L-R: Meredith Snaider as Anna and Larry Fessenden as Sam in HABIT. Photo courtesy of Glass Eye Pix.
Vampirism in media has come to represent a great deal of things depending on the author and their vision. In most cases, it’s either primarily romanticized or consumptive, but it’s almost always includes elements of both and highly sexual. What is the process of sucking another’s blood if not the transference of life, the stealing of energy, or the consummation between lovers? Within Fessenden’s Habit, it’s all of these things and more with vampirism serving as a stand-in for unsafe sex, drug use, and general compulsive behaviors. While not the most atypical presentation, it’s fascinating to look backward on Habit through this lens some 29 years since its release because of the way the world was then versus how it is now. The ‘90s had all kinds of safe sex and anti-drug campaigns going on (despite the best efforts of the Reagan Administration to leave those infected behind during their two terms) to raise awareness of prophylactic use, to prevent sharing of needles, and for partners to get tested. It’s in most tales that the protagonist is safe from such terrors as meet cutes lead to additional dates, not then-uncurable infections and potential addiction; however, in Habit, Sam is already a compulsive individual, drunk before arriving at the Halloween party and continuing to drink throughout. So much so that he doesn’t realize he’s left the party with the wrong jacket, resulting in his initial meeting of Anna concluding early. Even before they separate as he goes to look for his correct jacket, she calls him out on his compulsive behavior and she’s only known him for a brief while, a hunter well aware of her preferred prey, one might intuit. As the two grow more and more intimate and Sam’s health takes a turn, Fessenden uses visual tricks and costuming to communicate through Sam’s perspective what could be Anna’s real identity as a vampire. “Could be” is important because, unlike Blackout, which provides actual confirmation of the protagonist’s self-perception, and Depraved, which does involve the birth of The Creature, one can make plenty of arguments for what we see being vampirism as merely an extension of Sam’s own degrading health and self-created delusions. It’s this questioning that increases the weight of the narrative and its thematic elements as they relate to the metaphors at play.
Throughout the film, Anna remains an absolute mystery. We don’t know where she goes or why. Her job, if she has one, is kept a mystery. When prompted early in their courtship, she refrains from sharing because her lived experience tells her that the mystery of who she is is what keeps men interested and that the “catching” of her is where men fall out. With this acknowledgement, Anna keeps Sam at a certain distance and he’s on the hook, constantly doing things that support his continued psychological deference to her needs. First, we see it with the Ferris wheel (he has trouble with heights and goes on it despite telling her he’d prefer not to), then we see it with moving the meal he’s cooking to the roof because she won’t come in since it smells distasteful to her inside (is it the garlic in the recipe?), and then it’s the way she interacts with his friends during Thanksgiving, though this last one is a bit of tipping point for him. Even still, her mysterious allure pulls him in over and over, him accepting the repeated bites she takes, the drinking of his blood (a potential stand-in for drug sharing), while the sex itself is continuously unprotected. The mere act of being with Anna is the definition of someone who knows she’s wrong for him, but being with her fills him with such bliss in the moment that, despite the persistent and increasing physical weakness over time, he struggles to let go of her. When he does make an attempt to get clear, she roars back into his life like the worst compulsion one could have and, making matters worse, his cries for help go unheard because, to everyone else, he’s just doing what he’s always done.
Larry Fessenden as Sam in HABIT. Photo courtesy of The Overlook Film Festival/ Glass Eye Pix.
As a metaphor, Habit is fascinating; however, the climax of the film leaves one a little frustrated because of its ambiguity. For instance, it’s been made clear over and over that Anna asks for permission to enter somewhere before crossing a threshold, yet she manages to get inside Sam’s father’s apartment (a location she hadn’t been in yet). Before she appears, Sam goes to a grocery and purchases a cartful of garlic cloves to line windows and entryways, yet she breaks past them without issue. Heck, when she forces herself on Sam (an interesting depiction of sexual violence as metaphor for one’s habit causing self-harm), she does so exactly where a row of garlic had just been flung and broken — is the presence not a problem? Was it because the garlic had been aerosolized via cooking? Or is she even there? That last bit is heavily suggested through the final sequence of the film in which several on-lookers don’t notice her form lying on the ground, while the film closes on the same external shot of a boat in motion that we saw near the beginning. Having not yet seen Trauma Or, Monsters All and not knowing how Habit intersects with the new story, any presence of Sam would confirm that Anna was indeed a vampire who not only sought to feed on him, but to convert him; however, the current read is one of sorrow and heartbreak as Sam became so overcome with his own compulsions that reality was the last thing to break and, with it, his life.
If nothing else, Fessenden presents a version of New York City that doesn’t seem as possible today post-9/11, post-initial start of COVID-19 spread. The ways in which Sam moves through the city, the ways Fessenden steals footage here and there, these moments make NYC as much a significant part of the narrative as Sam’s own self-destruction. The city still stands, to be sure, but is it as alive now as it was then. The surveillance state that erupted post-9/11 makes the nighttime activities harder to accomplish without spotting and, certainly, the footage shot through hospital windows may brush against HIPPA. With the normalization of sex positivity and birth control, as well as improved health care for HIV and AIDS, elements that made the city dangerous, even speculatively, aren’t so now. And yet, there remains a sense that Habit is just as connected to New York City, the compulsions that exist within Sam still coursing through the city streets, its veins pulsing with untapped potential and individuals just one electric moment away from the best or worst moment of their lives. Only time shall time whether Sam is gone, exists as a specter, or has transitioned from this mortal coil into an immortal time fiend or some other unknown kind of monster. Regardless, the trauma resides and it hungers for a place to go.
Screened during The Overlook Film Festival 2026.
Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray via Vinegar Syndrome and on digital through various retailers.
For more information, head either to the official Habit The Overlook Film Festival webpage or Glass Eye Pix webpage.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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