Review: Near Dark (1987)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
Written by: Eric Red, Kathryn Bigelow
Music by: Tangerine Dream
Country: United States
Not available on Blu-ray or DVD
IMDb

In Near Dark, half the cast of Aliens reunites to support two very snoozy leads in Kathryn Bigelow’s horror-cum-western about a weirdo band of vamps on the lam. Adrian Pasdar is a boring cowboy and Jenny Wright is a boring vampire who turns him because love. He’s of course a wuss about it, and that means Bill Paxton in one of his best roles, Lance Henriksen in one of his best roles, Jenette Goldstein not in brown face, and Joshua John Miller, a precocious kid bloodsucker, need to carry around his dead weight as they try to teach him to ways of vampiring, which he frankly sucks at.

It is unfortunate that Paxton and Henriksen mostly lurk in the background while Pasdar and Wright stare into space with their stupid dead eyes, dragging down an otherwise excellent, if small-scale, tale that manages to make vampires both venomous and interesting, a task at which most horror films embarrassingly flounder. There’s no chemistry to speak of between them, but everyone else is strutting with so much attitude and killer confidence that you almost don’t have to notice that there’s some kind of love story going on. Bigelow — who went on to have a very interesting directing career with the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and other notable stuff like Point Break, Strange Days, and Zero Dark Thirty — directs the hell out of the flick, adding a wealth of visual flair that belies its modest story.

Tangerine Dream are an interesting choice to score a neo-western, but their music works well, fusing the film’s time with its place. It’s not their most memorable stuff, but it certainly isn’t detracting from anything. As an Arizonan, I have to beam a little when seeing the state’s beautiful, dessicated dusks on camera. The violence here is vicious and often sudden, usually initiated by Paxton’s Severen. His provocations in a bar-set massacre are chilling and charming.

It would have suited me wonderfully if Near Dark had focused on the gruesome gang as centuries-old comrades going out in a blaze of crimson glory, as it does in the last act, instead of trying to make inter-species romance work between two characters who barely convinced me of their sentience. But their best efforts can’t sink a well-made, atmospheric antihero-driven fable of brutality and fraternity.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10