Review Detail
9.2 2 10
(Updated: March 29, 2016)
Overall rating
8.5
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
9.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Narrative
7.0
Enjoyment
8.0
"We are the night" is a very enjoyable german vampyre movie.
---Spoilers ahead-----
It's not perfect, the question why male vampires would be more dangerous, seldestructive, too loud/stupid and had therefore to be eradicated for the greater "vampire" good, leaves something to be desired, when you see the three female vampire leads act exactly the same, but I still like it.
The movie is well made, well acted, has some good settings and the look and feel is stylish. INH5 improves it a little bit more by adding some fitting sounds here and there, by darkening a scene, fixing some continuity errors. These "changes" were well made and seamlessly integrated, so that you won't notice them unless you remember the original well.
What is more noticeable is that the voice over in the beginning has been thankfully removed and the new ending. In the original it is an open ending, the human love interest for the vampire protagonist has received shots and threatens to die, so she has to make a decision if she wants to turn him onto a vampire to save his life or not. Open ending. I like the open ending, but I like the new ending in this edit more:
INH5 uses the alternative ending available, where she refrains from biting him and instead leaves him and runs through a tunnel. INH5 improves upon that alternative ending by adding cops running up steps to the hurt cop, so that one can assume that he can still be saved.
But as good as this new ending is, there is imho a narrative flaw in it:
In this edit, only certain people can turn into vampires. INH5 made it visually clear by adding a red glow into the eyes of the female protagonist before she was turned into a vampire.
So in this new ending, her wanting to bite the cop and then refraining from it, only means that she got hungry and then resisted to eat, and not that she thought about turning him into a vampire or not. That is imho very unfortunate, because it diminishes a major theme of the movie as a whole, the question about has more worth a small life as a human or an eternal life as a vampyre, and it dimishes the sacrifice the protagonist made by letting him go, when she had the power to keep him forever.
This idea that only "gifted" people could turn into vampires was already hinted at in the original movie, but INH5 made it visually clear with the introduction of the red glow on the protagonist' eye. Imho it would have been better to take out that idea as a whole, and instead to rely on the vampire's intention: If she wants to turn a human into a vampire, she uses only a little bite (letting her "victim" to survive it, and therefore allowing the "turn") and sucking out a human kills him before he/she can turn.
That way the search of Louise for an eternal companion would have become more about searching for a soulmate and not for someone with the "gift".
The other thing I missed was Charlottes' complaint that she was not asked having this new life as a vampire, imho it would have added more texture to her character and made her suicide more believable/understandable.
There were some deleted scenes added and intergrated mostly seamlessly and most of them improve the movie, only one scene felt a bit unnatural to me: Right after Charlotte's death Louise opens a book of Charlotte.
----Spoilers behind------
Good editing, good use of special effects, new sounds, mostly interesting deleted scenes integrated... and a better ending, but unfortunately I feel a narrative point and opportunity was narrowly missed at the end (but caused by something from the beginning).
---Spoilers ahead-----
It's not perfect, the question why male vampires would be more dangerous, seldestructive, too loud/stupid and had therefore to be eradicated for the greater "vampire" good, leaves something to be desired, when you see the three female vampire leads act exactly the same, but I still like it.
The movie is well made, well acted, has some good settings and the look and feel is stylish. INH5 improves it a little bit more by adding some fitting sounds here and there, by darkening a scene, fixing some continuity errors. These "changes" were well made and seamlessly integrated, so that you won't notice them unless you remember the original well.
What is more noticeable is that the voice over in the beginning has been thankfully removed and the new ending. In the original it is an open ending, the human love interest for the vampire protagonist has received shots and threatens to die, so she has to make a decision if she wants to turn him onto a vampire to save his life or not. Open ending. I like the open ending, but I like the new ending in this edit more:
INH5 uses the alternative ending available, where she refrains from biting him and instead leaves him and runs through a tunnel. INH5 improves upon that alternative ending by adding cops running up steps to the hurt cop, so that one can assume that he can still be saved.
But as good as this new ending is, there is imho a narrative flaw in it:
In this edit, only certain people can turn into vampires. INH5 made it visually clear by adding a red glow into the eyes of the female protagonist before she was turned into a vampire.
So in this new ending, her wanting to bite the cop and then refraining from it, only means that she got hungry and then resisted to eat, and not that she thought about turning him into a vampire or not. That is imho very unfortunate, because it diminishes a major theme of the movie as a whole, the question about has more worth a small life as a human or an eternal life as a vampyre, and it dimishes the sacrifice the protagonist made by letting him go, when she had the power to keep him forever.
This idea that only "gifted" people could turn into vampires was already hinted at in the original movie, but INH5 made it visually clear with the introduction of the red glow on the protagonist' eye. Imho it would have been better to take out that idea as a whole, and instead to rely on the vampire's intention: If she wants to turn a human into a vampire, she uses only a little bite (letting her "victim" to survive it, and therefore allowing the "turn") and sucking out a human kills him before he/she can turn.
That way the search of Louise for an eternal companion would have become more about searching for a soulmate and not for someone with the "gift".
The other thing I missed was Charlottes' complaint that she was not asked having this new life as a vampire, imho it would have added more texture to her character and made her suicide more believable/understandable.
There were some deleted scenes added and intergrated mostly seamlessly and most of them improve the movie, only one scene felt a bit unnatural to me: Right after Charlotte's death Louise opens a book of Charlotte.
----Spoilers behind------
Good editing, good use of special effects, new sounds, mostly interesting deleted scenes integrated... and a better ending, but unfortunately I feel a narrative point and opportunity was narrowly missed at the end (but caused by something from the beginning).
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched
Digital