Near DarkThe hot sun bakes the sprawling range of Texas by day. By night, across the vast highways, punctuated by small outcroppings of artificial light--like bars and motels--everything wild and dark that hid from the radiance goes hunting. Near Dark is a vampire movie set in Texas, and is about a young cowboy named Caleb (Adrian Pasdar). When his days in the fields are done, he goes for a drink and spots a lovely young thing calling herself Mae (Jenny Wright), and strikes up a conversation in own his awkward way. They talk all night, and panicked Mae pleads with Caleb to take her home before dawn...but not before an impromptu make-out session plants the seed for Caleb's transformation into a vampire.
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Directed and co-written by Kathryn Bigelow, Near Dark is something of a "revisionist" vampire movie, set against a rural Texan backdrop, where the dust of the fields rises with the winds, where oil derricks pump away, and where the open road yawns wide. (There's even the rare tumbleweed.) It hardly seems like a place that monsters known to have a terrible aversion to sunlight would call home, but that's what makes it so interesting. Like many vampire movies, Caleb discovers the terrible side effects of his unexpected vampirism early--his vulnerability to sunlight which crisps him like bacon on a griddle and his aversion to normal food (like a candy bar), where only blood will sate his cravings. This is standard fare for the genre, but where Near Dark deviates and offers up a signature style all its own is in the presentation and dynamic between Caleb and his new "family" of vampires. The title is something of an understatement; Near Dark is one of the darkest of vampire movies, in a literal sense. Of course it makes sense that vampires would operate only after sunset, so much of the film is set at night. So like the vampires, the audience becomes acclimated to these dimly lit environs and sunlight becomes all the more jarring when it shows up again. The musical score by Tangerine Dream--who scored several ambitious and distinctly "Eighties" sci-fi/fantasy films--lends a haunting, dread-tinged feel to the movie, which is pitch perfect for Caleb's pervading terror and gloom. Caleb is a simple young man, but was raised right. He teases Mae but out of sweet flirtation, not out of some insidious lust. It's not unreasonable to think that Caleb is still a virgin, and that Mae's emergence as a vision of loveliness--a glowing star--transfixes him because he is inexperienced. She is very pretty, but in more than a couple of moments she makes it clear that there is something off about her. Caleb's horse doesn't like her, sure, but she also has this ennui about her, and claims that she'll outlast the light of a star a billion years off. Maybe Caleb takes this to be poetic, but perhaps he might have been better served by taking her back home then and there instead.
Caleb's transformation is swift, and he can't even make his way back to his family across a vast field with the sun beating down on him without being cooked alive. His father, Loy (Tim Thomerson)--a veterinarian who treats livestock--and his younger sister, Sarah (Marcie Leeds), watch Caleb get abducted by a Winnebago (yes, for real) with windows tinted to block out the sun. The vehicle is essentially a giant coffin on wheels, commandeered by the leader of this outfit of vampire "full-timers", the hardened Jesse (Lance Henriksen), whose past stretches back at least as far as the 19th century. For reasons left largely to the imagination, he has assembled a small clan of other vampires, including his lover, "Diamondback" (Jenette Goldstein), the prepubescent-in-body-only Homer (Joshua John Miller), and a sadistic biker with the blackest sense of humor, the utterly wild Severen (Bill Paxton); and none of them are pleased at Mae turning Caleb into one of them. They put him to a test: he must kill someone within a week, or they will kill him. This is where Near Dark makes a clear comparison between Caleb's new "family by default", and a gang. He must submit to their ways, or suffer the consequences. He has made a choice--even if he failed to understand the consequences of flirting with Mae--and is bound to this new crew. This dynamic also, more interestingly, explores how when people fall in love, they have to learn to adapt to their partner's family, or strife will surely arise. What happens when the girl you love comes from a family you don't get along with, or what if they don't like you? Caleb gets by on account of Mae's generosity for a while, but time is running out for Caleb. And he is painfully aware that Jesse and his clan of vicious killers (Mae aside) may be all that's keeping him from certain death.
One of the more interesting flourishes in Pasdar's performance is how Caleb matures throughout his tribulation, like in the pitch of his voice. From the start of Near Dark, his voice is almost too high pitched, as though he were not much more than a kid. But over the course of the movie, he experiences all kinds of life-altering experiences. At first, it is simple arousal over Mae, but quickly he is forced to endure as the deadly vampiric poison coursing through his veins takes control. He is forced to resign himself to dwelling with the other vampires who abuse him, yet his saving grace is that Mae opens her heart to him. Their love is consummated by blood; she bites open her wrist and feeds him sustenance. He has an unmistakable look of euphoria on his face after, and maybe not just because his craving has been quelled. He is pressed into situations where he bears witness to the clan's abject cruelty, like the protracted and openly sinister butchering of the patrons in a remote, roadside bar. This is not Caleb's way, but even the mere exposure to this horror marks him. His voice by the end of Near Dark is in a lower register, although nowhere as gravelly as Jesse's, who has been at this for far longer. One wonders what life must have been like for him more than a century prior; was it the same as Caleb's? Did he fall for a lovely girl like Mae, yet lacked the willpower or moral fortitude to resist the need to kill, instead justifying it and recruiting others like him to keep him company? It might better explain his reaction at the climax of Near Dark by way of this interpretation. Near Dark came out a couple of months after another revisionist teen vampire movie about a doomed romance: The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys draws an obvious comparison between the myth of Peter Pan and vampires--boys who never grow up. But Near Dark is more subtle in its comparisons, and this is most evident in the understated dynamic between Jesse and Caleb. Jesse is no true father to any of the vampires, but a de facto leader just because he is the oldest. But his time (and the era that birthed him) has passed. Consider when he wistfully shares that he fought "for the South" in the Civil War and adds that "we lost". Despite theoretically being able to live forever, a vampire's life (or "undeath") must be terribly boring, no different than an animal trying to sustain itself against all odds. The Wild West has long since been over. Time marches on, and Caleb and Mae represent a new generation, and a promise for the future. And all true families recognize when to step aside to allow for youth to have its time in the sun.
Recommended for: Fans of an unorthodox yet imaginative vampire movie, which benefits from its distinct tone, intriguing themes, and unusual setting most of all. Near Dark has tragically been out of print in the U.S. for a long time and is a rare find on streaming services, so make sure to watch this one when you can.
Caleb's transformation is swift, and he can't even make his way back to his family across a vast field with the sun beating down on him without being cooked alive. His father, Loy (Tim Thomerson)--a veterinarian who treats livestock--and his younger sister, Sarah (Marcie Leeds), watch Caleb get abducted by a Winnebago (yes, for real) with windows tinted to block out the sun. The vehicle is essentially a giant coffin on wheels, commandeered by the leader of this outfit of vampire "full-timers", the hardened Jesse (Lance Henriksen), whose past stretches back at least as far as the 19th century. For reasons left largely to the imagination, he has assembled a small clan of other vampires, including his lover, "Diamondback" (Jenette Goldstein), the prepubescent-in-body-only Homer (Joshua John Miller), and a sadistic biker with the blackest sense of humor, the utterly wild Severen (Bill Paxton); and none of them are pleased at Mae turning Caleb into one of them. They put him to a test: he must kill someone within a week, or they will kill him. This is where Near Dark makes a clear comparison between Caleb's new "family by default", and a gang. He must submit to their ways, or suffer the consequences. He has made a choice--even if he failed to understand the consequences of flirting with Mae--and is bound to this new crew. This dynamic also, more interestingly, explores how when people fall in love, they have to learn to adapt to their partner's family, or strife will surely arise. What happens when the girl you love comes from a family you don't get along with, or what if they don't like you? Caleb gets by on account of Mae's generosity for a while, but time is running out for Caleb. And he is painfully aware that Jesse and his clan of vicious killers (Mae aside) may be all that's keeping him from certain death.
One of the more interesting flourishes in Pasdar's performance is how Caleb matures throughout his tribulation, like in the pitch of his voice. From the start of Near Dark, his voice is almost too high pitched, as though he were not much more than a kid. But over the course of the movie, he experiences all kinds of life-altering experiences. At first, it is simple arousal over Mae, but quickly he is forced to endure as the deadly vampiric poison coursing through his veins takes control. He is forced to resign himself to dwelling with the other vampires who abuse him, yet his saving grace is that Mae opens her heart to him. Their love is consummated by blood; she bites open her wrist and feeds him sustenance. He has an unmistakable look of euphoria on his face after, and maybe not just because his craving has been quelled. He is pressed into situations where he bears witness to the clan's abject cruelty, like the protracted and openly sinister butchering of the patrons in a remote, roadside bar. This is not Caleb's way, but even the mere exposure to this horror marks him. His voice by the end of Near Dark is in a lower register, although nowhere as gravelly as Jesse's, who has been at this for far longer. One wonders what life must have been like for him more than a century prior; was it the same as Caleb's? Did he fall for a lovely girl like Mae, yet lacked the willpower or moral fortitude to resist the need to kill, instead justifying it and recruiting others like him to keep him company? It might better explain his reaction at the climax of Near Dark by way of this interpretation. Near Dark came out a couple of months after another revisionist teen vampire movie about a doomed romance: The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys draws an obvious comparison between the myth of Peter Pan and vampires--boys who never grow up. But Near Dark is more subtle in its comparisons, and this is most evident in the understated dynamic between Jesse and Caleb. Jesse is no true father to any of the vampires, but a de facto leader just because he is the oldest. But his time (and the era that birthed him) has passed. Consider when he wistfully shares that he fought "for the South" in the Civil War and adds that "we lost". Despite theoretically being able to live forever, a vampire's life (or "undeath") must be terribly boring, no different than an animal trying to sustain itself against all odds. The Wild West has long since been over. Time marches on, and Caleb and Mae represent a new generation, and a promise for the future. And all true families recognize when to step aside to allow for youth to have its time in the sun.
Recommended for: Fans of an unorthodox yet imaginative vampire movie, which benefits from its distinct tone, intriguing themes, and unusual setting most of all. Near Dark has tragically been out of print in the U.S. for a long time and is a rare find on streaming services, so make sure to watch this one when you can.