By Antoinette Isama<\/p>\n
Spike Lee takes a stab at horror film with his first Kickstarter<\/a> funded film, \u201cDa Sweet Blood of Jesus,\u201d which opened this week. A remake of Bill Gunn\u2019s 1973 independent film \u201cGanja and Hess,\u201d<\/a> Lee offers an uncanny analysis of religion, art and sexuality through a story of vampirism and uncontrollable addiction \u2014 literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n Dr. Hess Green (Stephen Tyrone Williams), an anthropologist studying the ancient Ashanti Empire, encounters an ancient dagger that alters his life, which is centered on his quaint, inherited 40-acre estate in Martha\u2019s Vineyard. The film\u2019s pace picks up when his mentally unstable research assistant, Dr. Lafayette Hightower (Elvis Nolasco), attempts suicide, then struggles to murder Hess with the dagger. After stabbing Green, Hightower, shocked by his own actions, kills himself. Green then comes back to life with an addiction to blood.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n