“Near Dark”.

This review was written as part of the Final Girl Film Club

[WARNING: Welcome to spoiler city.]

Some movies make it all look easy. They were born into rich families, maybe. Or they were born with good looks. Brains. Natural athletic ability. Normal movies have to work and work just to be adequate. But there is a race of super movies that achieve greatness with ease.

I believe that “Near Dark” is one of those movies.

Not that “Casablanca” has anything to worry about – “Dark” is not pure, unrelenting genius. But it’s interesting how much mileage the movie gets by keeping itself simple and focused in the places most horror movies would have 12 teenaged characters saying things like “This isn’t happening!” or “What do you want from us!?” and then getting knifed.

But let’s not talk about what “Near Dark” isn’t and talk about what it is – it’s the story of Caleb (Adrian “Solarbabies” Pasdar!) as a good ol’ boy from a broken home killing time in a small town. He meets Mae (Jenny “I, Madman” Wright!) outside a gas station and they ride off into the night. They roam around Caleb’s small town, giving Caleb several chances to be aw-shucks cute and giving Mae several chances to be nine kinds of strange and aloof. And then before Caleb can get her back home the next morning, she sinks her teeth into him, then takes off a-runnin’

Pretty soon, Caleb ain’t feelin’ so good – mainly because the morning sun is starting to burn his skin off – and before he can get himself home, he’s scooped up into an RV full of vampires – Lance “Pumpkinhead” Henriksen! Bill “Weird Science” Paxton! Janeatte “Aliens” Goldstein! And Joshua John “Creepiest Kid Actor of the 80s” Miller! This vampire clan doesn’t like Caleb, but they gotta take him along now – he’s one of them, now. He’s family.

This is where “Near Dark” proves its worth – it stays with the character of Caleb, caught in an impossible situation. He’s surrounded by blood-crazed killers, but if he tries to escape, he’ll never survive on his own. He does everything he can to keep from becoming a murderer, feeding off of Mae’s wrist to stay alive. But that’s not good enough for his new thrill kill cult family – they want him to either be a full-fledged member of the tribe, or they want him to be full-fledged dead.

Finally, it’s time to put up or shut up – the family goes to an out of the way bar to do some feeding and make sure that Caleb is a stand up guy. The sequence is pretty amazing, as it treads the line between glamorized violence and repulsion. When Bill “Titanic” Paxton opens the bartender’s throat with his razor-sharp spurs, that’s pretty cool. But one cut to Adrian “Profit” Pasdar’s expression and you see the humanity of it. The loss of life means something, here. And that meaning is found in Caleb, who rides the line between life and death.

Beware those reviews that call this a vampire western. There’s no gunslinging or shootouts, etc. If anything, it’s a vampire mid-western, more about small town America and its values than anything else. Whereas Bram Stoker’s Dracula was about a man of means, if you will, Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red’s characters got nothin’ but their jeans. These are gypsies and farmhands. Certainly people Count Dracula would’ve considered common. And whereas Dracula treated vampirism as a sort of disease, here it’s treated like adoption. Your blood relatives completely change once you’ve gotten the bite. You don’t choose your parents and they only sorta choose you.

The characters’ struggle always remains personal, whether its Caleb’s struggle or not. When Homer – the grandfatherly vampire trapped in Joshua John “Creepy” Miller’s body – sets eyes on Caleb’s young (and she’s… what… 10? 11?) sister, you can’t help but feel disgusted and sympathetic. Nobody on their evilest day wants a little girl taken in by a vampire. But at the same time – dude, Homer is hundreds of years old and will always look like a little kid. Does he deserve that punishment? And for Caleb – on the one hand, murdering people is wrong. But this family of vampires provides him with… well… something that resembles a normal family. Despite the bloodier aspects of the lifestyle, something about it feels like home. And maybe there’s even a feeling of responsibility that comes with that, with being a part of a family and not wanting to let them down.

In the end, Caleb manages to save himself and his true love thanks to a home-brewed blood transfusion, which takes the movie out on an up note that would’ve felt phony if there had been nothing of emotional worth up until then. In traditional good vs. evil fashion, good prevails and our heroes live happily ever after. In traditional Kathryn Bigelow fashion, shit explodes.

“Near Dark” succeeds by keeping everything simple and on a human level. And it’s managed to age well thanks to this approach. This isn’t a movie that’s easy to put a date on. This could’ve been the 80s or 90s or even a couple years ago. Except for the Tangerine “Firestarter”, “Three O’Clock High” Dream soundtrack, which I think is actually pretty great, but dates the movie harder than a co-ed at a Jack Nicholson convention.

PS – There’s a remake of “Near Dark” on the horizon, which I guess is fair enough, since the original isn’t exactly a househould title. It’s coming out of Platinum Dunes with Samuel Bayer directing. Here’s hoping the makers don’t find the need to graft a bunch of knobby limbs onto this already fine specimen. They have a lot to live up to.

Rating: Buy It