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This year's Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow, has made several other films full of machismo and violence besides the gritty Best Picture winner Hurt Locker. Along with 1991's popular action /heist film Point Break, her diesel tinged Western film about Vampires, Near Dark, is possibly her dirtiest, toughest road-hardened effort.
Set in the sun-parched, hardly night-friendly dust bowl of Oklahoma, Near Dark is the story of farm boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar, best known as Heroes' Nathan Petrelli) who meets a girl, Mae (Jenny Wright) who happens to be a Vampire. After turning him, Mae takes responsibility for Caleb amongst her Vampire friends. Mae and her 'clan' (including the ever-present Bill Paxton as the menacing Severen) wander the highways like a gang of bored, nihilistic youths - much like a post-punk Mad Max. When Caleb finds himself among them, distrusted by all but Mae, he makes a desperate attempt to stay alive and become part of the clan.
Filling every frame with grimey mise en scene, Bigelow has opted for a claustrophobic feel despite the vast expanse of the Mid-West setting. The closed in shots give the viewer the sense of how trapped Caleb feels, which couples nicely with his reluctance to feed. In opposition to Caleb's reluctance, the clan are not the civilised Vampires to which cinema is recently accustomed, looking only to feed, they revel in their bloodlust - in particular during a scene in a bar they call 'shit-kicker heaven'.
While the dialogue, costume, neon and a lot of the synthesiser-based music is so thick with the 1980s as to date the film terribly, Near Dark is a refreshing kind of Vampire film. Besides having no mention of Vampires throughout, there is barely even the sight of fangs. These are violent, bored and anarchic immortals who've grown weary and distant from any sense of their long lost humanity. This culminates in their refusal to show any special consideration for Caleb's innocent family.
Mixing and matching classic genre elements from Westerns, Road Movies, Supernatural Thriller and even a little Noir (with all the neon harkening a little to the Cohen brothers' desert thriller Blood Simple), Bigelow has made an interesting Vampire film that is quite apart from most others. More well known and released the same year, teen favourite The Lost Boys has none of Near Dark's gritty ambience or rough and tumble adrenalin. This is a film soiled with diesel and dust and blood-stained, sweaty, unclean machismo - no room for sparkles at all.
Perhaps in acknowledgment of how romanticised and callow Vampires have become, the film is being remade and scheduled for release in 2012.
Set in the sun-parched, hardly night-friendly dust bowl of Oklahoma, Near Dark is the story of farm boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar, best known as Heroes' Nathan Petrelli) who meets a girl, Mae (Jenny Wright) who happens to be a Vampire. After turning him, Mae takes responsibility for Caleb amongst her Vampire friends. Mae and her 'clan' (including the ever-present Bill Paxton as the menacing Severen) wander the highways like a gang of bored, nihilistic youths - much like a post-punk Mad Max. When Caleb finds himself among them, distrusted by all but Mae, he makes a desperate attempt to stay alive and become part of the clan.
Filling every frame with grimey mise en scene, Bigelow has opted for a claustrophobic feel despite the vast expanse of the Mid-West setting. The closed in shots give the viewer the sense of how trapped Caleb feels, which couples nicely with his reluctance to feed. In opposition to Caleb's reluctance, the clan are not the civilised Vampires to which cinema is recently accustomed, looking only to feed, they revel in their bloodlust - in particular during a scene in a bar they call 'shit-kicker heaven'.
While the dialogue, costume, neon and a lot of the synthesiser-based music is so thick with the 1980s as to date the film terribly, Near Dark is a refreshing kind of Vampire film. Besides having no mention of Vampires throughout, there is barely even the sight of fangs. These are violent, bored and anarchic immortals who've grown weary and distant from any sense of their long lost humanity. This culminates in their refusal to show any special consideration for Caleb's innocent family.
Mixing and matching classic genre elements from Westerns, Road Movies, Supernatural Thriller and even a little Noir (with all the neon harkening a little to the Cohen brothers' desert thriller Blood Simple), Bigelow has made an interesting Vampire film that is quite apart from most others. More well known and released the same year, teen favourite The Lost Boys has none of Near Dark's gritty ambience or rough and tumble adrenalin. This is a film soiled with diesel and dust and blood-stained, sweaty, unclean machismo - no room for sparkles at all.
Perhaps in acknowledgment of how romanticised and callow Vampires have become, the film is being remade and scheduled for release in 2012.
A worthy if dated example of low budget grit - 3.5 Stars
Labels: Kathryn Bigelow, Near Dark, Review, Vampires
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