Somehow I've ended up doing a mini-series here, all focussed on vampire movies. This time I'm reviewing another requested movie - this one's from Nick, who apparently doesn't want me to suffer as much as he's requested a movie that's actually really, really good - Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark.
Caleb Colton is an Oklahoma farm boy out for a night on the town when he meets a mysterious young woman named Mae. The two spend the night talking and teasing each other, but as dawn approaches, Mae becomes upset and demands to be taken home. Before she leaves Caleb she bites him on the neck, and as he then tries to make his way home Caleb finds himself starting to smoke and sizzle in the sunrise. Mae's bite has "turned" him, and he is picked up by the rest of her "family"; Jesse Hooker, Severin, Diamondback and Homer, who travel the states in stolen cars and RVs, hunting for prey at night. Angry at first that Mae has turned Caleb, the family give him a chance to prove that he is now one of them by killing and feeding off his own prey, but Caleb's repeated refusal to do so causes even more problems for the group. At the same time, Caleb's veterinarian father and young sister are also looking for him, and inevitably the two groups' paths cross...
Near Dark is a vampire movie that doesn't once use the word "vampire". It's also, in my opinion at least, one of the best damn vampire movies ever made, and the only reason it didn't receive the critical acclaim it deserved at the time of its release was because it came out at roughly the same time as another equally iconic vampire movie, The Lost Boys. Near Dark was also Kathryn Bigelow's first solo directorial work, and while at the time there were some who weren't sure of her ability to handle the role, the fact that the movie is now in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection shows those worries were unfounded.
The scene that just about everyone remembers or at least knows of from Near Dark is the massacre at the bar. Attempting to give Caleb one last chance to become one of them by killing and feeding, the family arrive at a small, isolated bar and proceed to casually slaughter everyone there save for one man, who Caleb lets go after he cannot bring himself to kill. The bar massacre stands out so well because of both its cinematography and choreography; both are casual, almost leisurely in their execution. The audience knows exactly why the family are there and how dangerous they are, which ratchets up the tension even more as we're just waiting for the killing to start; however, people seem just frozen in time as they are picked off one by one with Jesse and his crew almost showing off for the audience. Well, I say 'almost' - Severin is definitely showing off; partly as a demonstration for Caleb and partly because that's who he is - his weapon of choice being his razor-sharp spurs being a prime example. Overall, it's a scene I suspect has inspired many a bar room fight or murder scene in later years.
As I said above, the term "vampire" isn't used at all in the film; instead, I think the word "predator" is probably better suited to Jesse, Severin and the others. They hunt their prey methodically and efficiently - each has their own way of doing so, from Homer pretending to have been knocked off his bike to Severin's (literal) ladykiller persona - that reminds me much more of serial killers than anything else. There's also nothing supernatural about these vampires - other than fire and sunlight (and I assume decapitation because that generally works for everything) they're not shown to have any weaknesses. There's no holy water to be thrown around and Jesse's revolver even has a cross in the butt that he handles without a problem, and no-one turns into bats or wolves. They're thoroughly modern vampires.
The characterisation is excellent as well. Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein were recommended to Bigelow for her film by her then-husband James Cameron, who had just finished shooting Aliens with them, and their close-knit camaraderie shows through. We don't learn too much about them through the course of the movie, but what we do learn is tantalizing enough: Jesse fought in the American Civil War (for the South); Severin was almost certainly a cowboy (and he and Jesse may have been responsible for the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871); Homer was turned 40 years ago but still looks (and acts, although he'd kill you if you pointed it out) like an 11-year-old. Diamondback I've never been able to quite place, except that she was turned in a time period when people had cars, but it doesn't really matter because together the five of them have formed a sort of anti-nuclear family - Jesse as father, Diamondback as mother, Severin as the uncle or eldest son, Mae as the daughter and Homer as the youngest child. This can also be seen as the reason why things fall apart so much when Caleb is brought in - he disrupts the balance of the family even without his relationship with Mae (taking the only daughter away from the family, Caleb of course needs to earn the respect of her "father" and "brother").
Oh, and the music from Tangerine Dream makes it even more quintessentially 80s. I could keep going for quite some time. But I won't. Just go watch Near Dark for yourself. You won't be disappointed.
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