"Near Dark" Review

Before Point Break and Strange Days, Kathryn Bigelow made a small splash with her second feature effort, 1987's Near Dark, a gritty movie about vampires (who are never referred to as such) in Oklahoma and surrounding flat areas of the Midwest. A box office disappointment due to being an indie flick following The Lost Boys by a couple of months, it's got a following as a cult movie. I barely remember seeing it, probably in the 1990s on VHS, so how does it hold up? Not particularly well.

Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) stars as Caleb Colton, a horny dumb guy who spots Mae (Jenny Wright, Pink Floyd's The Wall) one night outside an ice cream stand. He hits on her and she gets in his pickup and toys with his flirtations. She realizes it's getting close to dawn and begs him to get her home, but being a dumb horny guy refuses unless she gives him a kiss. She does, but also bites his neck a bit, before running off into the night. His truck won't start, so he has to walk home across the flat plains.

As the Sun comes up he begins smoking as in smoke coming off his body. (Ruh-roh.) He approaches his house where he's spotted by sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds, Beaches) and father Loy (Tim Thomerson, Trancers), but then a Winnebago drives across the field and snatches Caleb and whisks him away. It's the rest of Mae's "family" led by Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen, Aliens), along with Severen (Bill Paxton, Aliens), Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein, Aliens), and Homer (Joshua John Miller, Aliens River's Edge), a young boy. They take him on the road with them as they kill their way across the flatlands.

Caleb balks at killing, so settles for drinking from Mae's wrist, which doesn't endear him to Jesse. When he lets the lone survivor of a bar massacre escape, Jesse fears that it will bring the heat down on them and when it does, only Caleb's daring actions save them. But when the family moves on Sarah, things come to a head.

As often happens when watching these cult "classics" I fail to see what makes them so beloved and I say this as someone who saw Xanadu over a dozen times in the theater and have bought it on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, AND 4K UHD Blu-ray and can rant at length about how it's the Greatest Terrible Movie Ever. There are a handful of striking images that seem to have seared themselves into fans minds and led them to believe they witnessed something special.

The core problem begins and ends with Bigelow's script (co-written with Eric Red, writer of The Hitcher) which spares no time to give any of the characters some, well, character. The closest we get to learning anything about any of them is Jesse answering the question of how old he is with, "I fought for the South. We lost." But that's it. Paxton is just rehashing his Hudson from Aliens and the punk killed by the Terminator in Terminator roles. Goldstein's only traits are a messed up two-tone hairdo and surprisingly large boobs. Hendrickson is creepy, but that's his default look.

We have no idea why Caleb and Mae are together other than being horny though it doesn't seem paid off in any tangible way. It's all style over substance and Bigelow completely whiffs the ending - spoiler for a four decade old film coming - by having the lovers embrace in an awkward freeze frame when the obvious finale would be these two to walk hand in hand out into the sunshine. Come on!

While it has some cool visual moments, Near Dark is otherwise sadly nearly empty of compelling content.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.