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Near Dark is at once a creepy vampire film, a thrilling western, and a poignant family tale, with humor and scares in abundance. Read critic reviews
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Movie Info
Cowboy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) meets gorgeous Mae (Jenny Wright) at a bar, and the two have an immediate attraction. But when Mae turns out to be a vampire and bites Caleb on the neck, their relationship gets complicated. Wracked with a craving for human blood, Caleb is forced to leave his family and ride with Mae and her gang of vampires, including the evil Severen. Along the way Caleb must decide between his new love of Mae and the love of his family.
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Rating: R
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Genre: Horror, Western
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Original Language: English
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Director: Kathryn Bigelow
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Producer: Steven-Charles Jaffe
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Writer: Kathryn Bigelow, Eric Red
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Release Date (Theaters): original
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Release Date (DVD):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $2.5M
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Runtime:
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Distributor: Paramount Pictures, Anchor Bay Entertainment, Image Entertainment Inc.
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Production Co: Near Dark Joint Venture
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Sound Mix: Surround
Cast & Crew
News & Interviews for Near Dark
Critic Reviews for Near Dark
Audience Reviews for Near Dark
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I've been wanting to see this movie for a while and, finally, I got the chance to do so on Amazon Prime, through an add-on subscription for Starz. I think this might be, I wouldn't actually know, one of the first movies (along with Lost Boys, released two months before this one) to completely change the perception of vampires in films. Usually, for example Dracula, was, as described in the description for this film on this site, an elegant aristocrat. These vampires are a little more grimy and dirty, they behave like a gang more than anything else. Again, I have no idea if this was the first movie to take this approach, but it was definitely ahead of its time in trying to change the perception of what the vampire mythology could be like if approached from outside the box. It's also impressive to see how this film balances a variety of different genres. It's a western, a family drama, a darkly comedic, a romance and, obviously, a horror movie all in one. The romance, to me, is definitely the weakest of all these genres. It's just that, to me, Adrian Pasdar and Jenny Wright don't have that much chemistry with each other honestly. Like there was nothing that I saw between them that led me to believe that they were madly in love with each other. It doesn't help that Jenny Wright wasn't particularly good here. She was definitely inconsistent. Not what I would call good, but there were some scenes where she was fine and others where her delivery was just dreadful and she would just have this look like she was stoned or just about to fall asleep. The problem is that the movie, for the most part, deals with Caleb finding a way to fit into this gang of vampires after he's bitten by Mae and not so much on his actual relationship with her, so that hurts the movie's romantic elements. The rest of the film, however, is really damn good. The cast, with the exception of Jenny Wright, is real strong filled with talented character actors/actresses as Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein and Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton, to me, has never been great, there's something wooden about him, but I think he plays his role really well here. There's not as much blood and gore in this movie as one would expect, but what's there is really good and the make-up effects for the burns the vampires suffer, particularly Severen, during the climax, are excellent. I really like this movie honestly. I just like how it's paced and how it's put together. I did have some issues like how a simple blood transfusion from his father was able to cure Caleb of his vampire curse. It was too easy of a solution for this. And then Caleb does the transfusion for Mae and she is somehow cured. It's not quite a deus ex machina, but it does feel like it comes out of nowhere with no reasonable explanation given. Even with that, I still really enjoyed this movie and I think it holds up really well in the, almost, 30 years since its release. It might not be great, it definitely has some flaws, but it's a really damn good movie that I would definitely recommend.
jesse o Super Reviewer -
Thirty years on, and Near Dark still holds up. A young Bill Paxton steals the show as a Texas vampire who's equal parts bikie and cowboy, even amongst such stars as Lance Henriksen and Adrian Pasdar. One of the most influential vampire films of all time, it's vibrations can still be felt in the monster movies of today, and while that's not always a good thing, it's noteworthy, and Near Dark in and of itself is a great Southern Gothic tale for the modern world.
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gritty and nonsense filmmaking, the cast is brilliant and proof you can make an interesting vampire flick without conventions.
brendan n Super Reviewer
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