Near Dark

As I mentioned during the award season, the only Kathryn Bigelow I had seen was The Hurt Locker. Over the next few days I aim to address that, as I have her other six films at the top of my Netflix queue. First up, her first feature, 1987's Near Dark, a combination Western and horror film, that though low-budget drive-in fare, has some stylistic flourishes that indicate a better-than-average director.

Set in the contemporary West, Near Dark features Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, a ranch-hand who is in town and eyes a young lady eating an ice-cream cone. She is Mae, played by Jenny Wright, and he manages to get her into his truck. She holds out on him, and then seems concerned when dawn approaches. Before she bolts out of his truck she bites him on the neck, and when the sun does rise he realizes the light burns his skin.

It turns out that Wright travels with a family of vampires, headed by Lance Henriksen (when asked how old he is, he answers that he "fought for the South"). Being vampires, they need to hunt humans for their sustenance, but Wright still has a shred of humanity. Pasdar, though, balks at killing people, but his new family tells him he must carry his own weight in the bloodletting or they will kill him.

I found Near Dark to be moderately engaging. It was done on the cheap--most of the killing takes place off-screen, and I think that was less an attempt to mitigate the gore than it was to save on the costs of makeup effects. The film is only about ninety minutes, but has two fairly long set pieces--when the vampires come calling at a dive bar and kill everyone inside, and a shootout with police, utilizing a director's favorite, the shafts of light emanating through bullet-holes. Both scenes show Bigelow's craftsmanship.

But the film is very light on story (it was co-written by Bigelow and Eric Red). Basically the vampires must stay out of sunlight, but they always seem to having to deal with it. It's amazing that Henriksen lasted as long as he did, considering he mostly goes around covered in blankets and puts tin foil on the windows (what did he do before tin foil was invented?) It was refreshing to see a film about vampires that didn't have some subplot involving vampire bureaucracy. These bloodsuckers are on their own, and don't live very fancily. Instead of vampires on velvet-upholstered chairs living in villas, Near Dark's live in stolen Winnebagos. That seems about right.