| Product: |
Near Dark (DVD) |
| Date: |
28/06/00 (39 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: another good twist on the vampire...
Disadvantages: that one transfusion
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break and Strange Days), this film is a dark reminder of some of the 1940’s and 1950’s pictures. While Near Dark certainly won’t change the world, it is refreshing to get a completely different telling of the vampire as a real-life monster.
In the common vampire movie the vampire is usually a member of the aristocracy (take Count Dracula for instance, isolated but for the few who happen upon his castle). In Near Dark there are no immortals in black silk flying around and transforming themselves into bats or wolves, etc. There is no unearthly mist or eerie shadows that follow anyone. There are no menacing looking vampire hunters with their arsenal of stakes, crosses, garlic and holy water, seeking out the evil they have recently sensed. What you do have, however, is a bunch of drifters who haunt bars, steal cars, kill indiscriminately for blood and shun the daylight hours without those pesky concerns of morality and sensibility.
In Near Dark the traditional "good guys" and villains are continually switched around as the film goes on. Sympathy for the nomadic vampire group shifts back and forth throughout the film, continually playing on your emotions.
Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), who appears to be a drifter, wearing dirty western clothing and a cowboy hat is standing outside a convenience store with his friends when he sees Mae (Jenny Wright) walk out for a breath of air while eating an ice cream cone. Caleb is immediately smitten and begins to talk with her. Later, while taking an evening drive together, Caleb tells Mae that he has never met any other girls like her. "No, you haven't met any girls like me," she answers. Caleb is even more intrigued with Mae. His character seems to have restless energy and dogged determination as well as individualism, just as the traditional cowboy does in film.
It goes without saying that Caleb is eventually bitten by Mae an
d begins to change, but change into what? Caleb has no concept of vampires. In one of the film's early scenes Caleb has dropped Mae off and is stumbling across an open field in a desperate attempt to get home. He was just been bitten by Mae and the sun is beginning to rise. As he crosses the field his body is beginning to burn in the open sunlight but he doesn’t know what is happening to him yet. Caleb is abducted by the drifters before he can reach the other side of the field and is soon informed that he must drink blood in order to "live". He refuses and is then caught up in an adventure he could never have prepared for, all the while torn between his life with Mae and his life back home with his sister, Sarah (Marcie Leeds) and his father, Loy.
Tim Thomerson is Caleb’s father, Loy Colton, who will stop at nothing to find his son. Jesse (Lance Henriksen - Aliens, Millenium) is the leader of Mae’s group of drifters. Bill Paxton (Aliens, Twister) plays the wise-cracking, unstable, spur-wearing Severen, delivering some brilliant one-liners. Joshua John Miller is Homer, one of the vampires who was turned while he was a child. He appears to be quite disenchanted with his current lifestyle, always angry and cynical until he meets Caleb's sister Sarah.
There is one scene at the end that I found myself thinking "what? No way that could happen!" But then I realized that it really was a part of the film and, even though unrealistic to me, did help make up this particular story. There are some humorous scenes, some bloody fight scenes (what did you expect? It is a vampire flick!), and, for the most part, a very believable story.
Near Dark does have merit, it has been a cult movie classic for quite awhile now and a common flick for vampire enthusiasts of all ages. I’ve seen it a bazillion times (okay, at least 15) and I have to say, I still enjoy it every single time. Makes me want to wear spurs
out on the town some evening … you know, just in case.
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