Review // NEAR DARK - Is near perfection

Near Dark is a cult film, but even its membership in that dubious club doesn't quite sum up just how underrated it was and still is today. It doesn't screen at rep cinemas on Halloween, it isn't mentioned in the same breath as the Evil Dead's etc. and nobody is rushing to remake it on a nostalgia cash-grab like every other genre film that opened before 1991. However, at one point the soulless, imagination-starved fucks at Micheal Bay's Platinum Dunes were prepping a remake of it, but they apparently thought it was too close to Twilight and scrapped it. Yes, someone actually thought there would be too much cross-over between Near Dark and Twilight and that's why the project fell through. What that means is that the people who bought the rights to the movie don't even understand it and if that doesn't tell you how under-appreciated this film is, I don't know what does.

Near Dark is a vampire film that never utters the word "vampire" and it was the first feature directed by Kathryn Bigelow (she had a male co-director for The Loveless), who went on to screw James Cameron before later getting screwed by Hollywood. Now I have no definitive proof that she was screwed by Hollywood (and I wish I had definitive proof that she screwed Cameron, boom-chk-a-boom) but judging from the arc of her directorial career, the fact that she doesn't possess a penis, and the vindication narrative being concocted around her recent Hurt Locker awards run, I would say that it's a fairly safe bet to assume she was. 20 years after making her first film, Bigelow is now hot (and still hot!) and poised to take home the highest honor in filmdom, but the road to this point has been long and bumpy and the fact that she has finally arrived is about as unlikely a story as Hollywood could produce. But her career struggles were not for lack of an auspicious beginning, as Near Dark is a striking, bold, original and absolutely assured genre picture, and should have announced the arrival of a major talent.

I first saw Near Dark on VHS, probably about a year after its release in 1987. It knocked me on my ass and has remained one of my favourite films of all time and definitely my favourite vampire movie. My latest Blu-Ray viewing is easily the 20th time I've seen it, yet it still holds up completely and aside from some music cues, doesn't feel dated or unearthed from an airless tomb of period or nostalgia.

Adrian Pasdar plays Caleb, a red-blooded American farmboy. He tucks in his shirt and polishes up his cowboy boots, heading into town for a Friday night of drinking brewskies and seeing what's up on Main street. On this particular Friday night, Mae is what's up. A blond vision bathed in the fluorescent light of the strip mall, Mae is licking an ice cream cone when Caleb lays eye's on her and he doesn't waste any time taking his shot. They drive and talk and Caleb keeps repeating "I sure haven't met any girls like you". She tells him he's right. With dawn threatening to break over the flat plains, Mae suddenly becomes agitated. She bites Caleb on the neck after giving him the kiss he demands with a coy twinkle in his eye, then she takes off running, to where it isn't clear. Caleb is thrown for a loop, and with his truck stalled out, he sickly stumbles across the tilled fields toward home. As the sun climbs the sky, smoke begins to waft off of his body and char collects on his sweat-greased skin. Something is happening to him. As he reaches his home fields, his little sister is starting her morning chores and she spots him. But suddenly a Winnebago careens across the fields and scoops him up, speeding off with his sister running down the driveway screaming his name.

There is an hypnotic, dream-like quality to the images in this film and to the general mood, which grabs you immediately and distinguishes itself from the typical tongue-in-cheek teenage meat grinders of the time (nothing against teenage meat grinders mind you). It is a very evocative piece of filmmaking, casting small-town Americana as a place where darkness and foreboding stalk the routines of simple reality. Abandoning all the gothic trappings of most vampire movies, Near Dark instead interprets the desolate images of the Western and the road-reverence of biker films and filters them both through a prism of horror. And yet this is certainly not a case of style over substance, no matter how stylish it is. I would even say that it's a beautiful film, which is a feat for a low-budget 80's horror movie. But the dreamy imagery works in concert with the absolutely rock-solid concept and Bigelow's subtle approach to story and character. Bigelow and screenwriter Eric Red leave so much of these characters a mystery that the audience ends up filling in the blanks of their long, sordid pasts, imagining terrible exploits and innocent blood spilled through the ages.

Winnebago's are family vehicles. The Winnebago that Caleb finds himself in also belongs to a family, but it is a family of another kind altogether. The patriarch, Jesse, is a grizzled killer who's clocked millions of miles across southern roads in his long lifetime and dodged thousands of sunrises. Diamondback is his better-half, her dark roots reaching up for peroxide blond hair that is as wild as the murderous look in her eyes come feeding time. Severin is the leather-clad wild child with a gleeful devotion to anarchy. Mae is the ingenue, following the lead of the family, but looking outside its bounds for truth. And Homer is the baby, an ancient demon perpetually young and frustrated. They are a make-shift family unit of vampires, united not by their blood, but of their need to consume it. The bite on Caleb's neck has forced him into their dynamic, and no one but Mae is happy about it. Jesse agrees to give him a trial period, a chance to prove that he can kill and feed as one of them, and if not, they will punish him as only they know how.

Surprisingly, Near Dark is not a heavily plotted movie. The bulk of the story is devoted to Caleb travelling with the family and realizing that despite his strong feelings for Mae (hence the ridiculous Twilight comparisons), he will never truly be one of them. The normal rules and contrivances that horror movies are often saddled with are not really present here. There are no sharpened stakes, no wreaths of garlic, no holy water or crosses, no lore to remember. Aside from the blood drinking and aversion to sunlight, Jesse and the family would just be considered psychopathic killers, and precursors (along with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family) to murderous compacts in films like Natural Born Killers and the Devil's Rejects. The film travels with them, showing the meager, nomadic existence they have carved out for themselves and the hunting tactics that keep them fed. These are vampires interpreted as homeless drug addicts just scraping by and it's truly a revolutionary concept in the genre.

Until Near Dark, almost all vampires were portrayed as wealthy aristocrats. They were handsome and sexy, they lived in mansions and their charm and beauty was as eternal as their lives. Instead of fear, vampire portrayal's like this often provoked envy in men and lust in women, and with Twilight and True Blood it seems we have returned to this trad concept of vampires as Harlequin romance fantasy (although with True Blood it's at least presented with a knowing wink). The vampires of Near Dark however, are dirty, poor and mean. They don't wear capes and ascots, but greasy layers of stolen clothes worn down to rags. They don't romance their victims, they toy with them and terrify them before ripping out their throats. They live one night at a time, constantly moving like sharks in dark water. Their squalid existence answers the question How exactly do vampires acquire such great wealth when they can only go out at night? The answer is they don't.

The other really interesting thing about Near Dark is its structure, which breaks with most horror movies by embedding the viewer with the villains, forcing them into a kind of complicity with the havoc they wreak. Most horror movies frame the action through the hero/victim's eyes, and this perspective is meant to be shared with the viewer. Essentially the audience is kept on the outside of the villains machinations, a few steps behind, tensely waiting for the next strike. Near Dark puts the viewer on the inside, replacing cheap jolt thrills with a chilling depiction of survival of the fittest. In fact, it can hardly be said that Bigelow even treats Jesse and the gang as true villains since the film seems as seductively taken in by them as Caleb is. It's a risky move--essentially deconstructing both the vampire film and the horror movie form--but it's this approach that set it apart and has made it an absolute classic.

Bigelow's unlikely vampire gamble wouldn't have paid off however, if her cast weren't up to the task of inhabiting such unrepentantly awful characters with a certain amount of abandon, even glee. Not only that, but they had to be willing to play dirty and ugly, leaving any vanity behind. Of course Bigelow chose wisely, reuniting Aliens cast mates Lance Henrikson (Bishop/Jesse), Bill Paxton (Hudson/Severin) and Jeanette Goldstein (Vasquez/Diamondback) who brought their unique alchemy from Cameron's film, and ended up creating iconic badasses that haven't been topped since. Lance Henrikson, a character actor gift from the gods, plays Jesse with an insane facial scar and greasy rat tail running down his back. I could try to describe how impossibly amazing he looks in this film, but fuck it:



When asked how old he is, Jesse replies "I fought for the South. We lost". With his punk rock-meets-western britches and suspenders look, Jesse suggests a secret American history with his very presence. He is a creature who has watched the many cultural and industrial sea changes that have sculpted the country and all the while he has been doing what he does, un-fazed and unchanged. In Diamondback he has found a partner to head down the road with, to weather the storms of history by his side and to toast the burning future with blood. This loving relationship, built on mutual admiration, is one of the many surprising touches that Bigelow either engineers or encourages her actors to improvise and explore. It's not often that a film allows its murderous pariah's to express love and affection, but these tiny moments further distinguish Near Dark as a wholly unique horror movie.

The other major assets to the film are Bill Paxton as Severin and the odd-looking child actor Joshua Miller as Homer. Paxton brings the same manic energy he showed in Aliens, only applied to a supremely confident and psychotic character, as opposed to a bellowing coward. He absolutely runs with Severin and revels in his hooting-and-hollering id. Severin is the bad guy you want to watch do bad things. With the character of Homer, the film gets its creep factor upped. There is something about a punk rock, blood-drinking child that is undeniably squirm-inducing and Miller imbues Homer with a bratty petulance that creates a disturbing extra layer to the character. When a raid by cops threatens to bring daylight flooding into their motel room, Homer becomes hysterical. Jesse cocks his hand cannon and points it at his head saying, "Pull it together old man!" It simultaneously suggests that Homer, the baby of the family, is actually the most ancient of them all, but is forever doomed to retain a measure of his childish nature.

The raid on the motel room mentioned above is one of two classic sequences that Bigelow absolutely nails the fuck out of. The other is the roadhouse bar massacre, which I will get to. With the motel room siege, an army of cops riddle the motel with machine gun fire. This punches holes in the wall that bleed shafts of flesh-burning sunlight that cut up the room, creating light obstacles the family must battle around. I lost my shit during that sequence when I was a kid.

The bar scene is the film's most infamous sequence. Determined to show Caleb how they exist and get him to follow their lead, Jesse and the family brazenly pick out a roadhouse bar to be their all-you-can-eat buffet. When they walk in, everyone looks up from their drinks or their pool shot to see this raggediest of rag-tag misfits invade their home-away-from home watering hole. The effect is instant, their eyes narrowing, unsure. And when Severin let's out a hoo-ee! and declares that he's "died and gone to shit-kicker heaven" trouble immediately sours the air. The family take their time, toying with their room full of victims the way a cat sometimes gives a mouse just enough breathing room to lose its mind before it gets eaten. The tension builds to excruciating heights before the bloodletting leaves its disturbing mark on your mind. It's the showpiece of the film and is definitive proof of Bigelow's mastery of her craft.

If the movie ever falters or bows to convention, it's at the end, when it quite abruptly starts tying itself into a neat bow that is both disappointing an unnecessary. The movie does such an amazing job of etching these immortal creatures that it feels false when they are so easily and tidily erased. One gets the sense that Jesse has been around the block a few hundred times and would know when to cut his losses, so the naive Caleb being the catalyst for the family's downfall doesn't exactly ring true. But the ending (which was probably imposed from on high) doesn't hamper an otherwise ingenious and masterful reconsidering of the vampire mythos. Near Dark is a classic. If you've seen it, watch it again. If you haven't seen it, way to go jerk.