Habit (1995 film)

Sam is a self-destructive, vaguely artistic New York bohemian who has recently lost his father and his long-time girlfriend. At a Halloween party he meets a mysterious, beautiful, androgynous woman named Anna (Meredith Snaider). He embarks on a kinky, sex-charged relationship with her; but soon he develops a mysterious illness, and eventually comes to believe that Anna is a vampire.

• Larry Fessenden as Sam
• Meredith Snaider as Anna
• Aaron Beall as Nick
• Patricia Coleman as Rae
• Heather Woodbury as Liza
• Jesse Hartman as Lenny
• Kelly Reichardt as Partygirl on Phone

Habit was based on a short film by the same name, also by Fessenden, which he created in 1981 as a film student in New York University. Filming took place in New York City during 1994. The film was shot on 16mm film and on a budget of approximately $60,000. According to Lost Reels, Fessenden did not have filming permits for all of his scenes.^[2]

Of the film, Fessenden has stated that he wanted to make "the scariest movie since Night of the Living Dead" and that "in a strange, perverse way I succeeded - not in making a scary movie, but in making one that was perverse beyond my dreams."^[3]

Habit premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 15, 1995.^[4] It went on to screen at several film festivals and was released on to VHS and DVD.^[5][6] Vinegar Syndrome has released the movie both as a solitary release as well as part of a two-pack with Fessenden's film No Telling.^[7][8]

In 2022 Habit was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, New York as part of a retrospective of both Fessenden's career and his production company, Glass Eye Pix.^[9] That same year it was also screened in the United Kingdom through the organization Lost Reels, which stated that it was the movie's United Kingdom premiere.^[2]