I’ll never speak ill of the late Bill Paxton. A national treasure if there ever was one, Paxton just exudes fun on screen – bringing surfer-bro screams to the action of Aliens, or treasure-hunting swagger to Titanic. Yet, Paxton is like garlic.1 If added to a dish in correct amounts it can bring out the best of all the other flavors – but if the oregano, the tomato, or the paprika can’t keep up, the whole meal becomes about the garlic. Near Dark, Katherine Bigelow’s sophomore directorial effort is microwavable garlic bread.
Originally envisioned as a western, Bigelow and writing partner Eric Red failed to get funding – until they threw in a heavy dose of bloodsuckers to bank off the rise of vampire flicks in the late eighties. Set along the dusty backroads of Oklahoma, Near Dark follows a generic male protagonist (Adrian Pasdar as Caleb) as he is seduced and ultimately bitten by a woman traveling with a band of vampiric nomads. The crew travels the Midwest stealing cars, killing pedestrians, and playing Russian roulette in seedy motels. To say that Caleb is a non-entity would be an understatement. Giving nothing besides wide-eyed looks of terror and the occasional moral monologue, his performance hammers the nails into the coffin before the film even has a chance to impress.
Luckily, the gang of undead riff-raff manages to breathe some life into the picture. The unnamed posse is made up of weary leader Jesse (Lance Henriksen), his main squeeze Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), Caleb's love interest Mae (Jenny Wright), the enterally young Homer (Joshua John Miller), and finally, the boisterous psychopath Severen (Bill Paxton). It’s not much, however. Remember that god-awful episode of Stranger Things season two, where Eleven visits that band of X-Men knockoffs who all have different abilities and hairstyles? Near Dark’s vampire gang is slightly better than that. Beyond engaging performances from Paxton and Henriksen, they amount to nothing but bickering bodies that occupy the same room. There is no unifying idea with Jesse’s posse beyond the fact that they’re just covered in dirt. It’s assumed that at least two of them date back from the Confederate South, but for what was initially billed as a western, that idea isn’t toyed with.
Compare them with another group of nomadic vampires: the True Knots from Mike Flanagan’s 2019 adaptation of Doctor Sleep. The True Knots travel the country looking for children who have ”the shining”, then kill them in excruciating pain to psychically feed on their anguish. Playing off the psychic nature of the vampires, Flanagan depicts the True Knots as dumpy, middle-aged hippies – empty nesters you might see buying sage at a New Age store or parking their Subaru at Whole Foods. Even though there’s only one named character among the True Knots, this cohesive and thought-through characterization makes them an actual entity to be feared, rather than a grab-bag of traits.
So what works about Near Dark? As I mentioned above, garlic bread is delicious. Bill Paxton is a jolt of electricity, walking with a crotch-first swagger, and slicing open arteries with his boot spurs. They even put him on the poster when he’s arguably the fourth lead of the film. Paxton’s decision to ham up every scene is pure bubblegum entertainment, but it almost has a negative effect on the film as a whole. He’s so good, rocking his head like a rooster and slurping blood off his fingers like it’s BBQ sauce, that the rest of the cast’s downplayed performances feel like they’re in a different, drier movie.
Bigelow’s direction is also a highlight, as the film feels like watching her master her profession in real-time.2 While the early scenes are sluggish, the action by the midway point reminds us of why Point Break is a classic. The famous bar scene, where the nomads slaughter an entire dive bar is tense and horrific. Severen toys with these innocent good ol’ boys for what seems like an eternity, before washing the wooden floorboards in their blood. The special effects surrounding the vampires are also impressive. When exposed to light, their skin molts and evaporates in clouds of dust, indistinguishable from the dry Oklahoma soil they tread. Eventually, their skin becomes blackened and sizzled, like the skin on some burnt chicken. In one of the standout sequences of the film, a shootout blasts holes of light that crisscross the nomad’s hotel room – leaving hard lines of light that melt the vampires like lasers.
Near Dark has its place among many of the “cult classics” of the eighties, so my disappointment with it is a minority opinion. However, it’s still pretty heartbreaking that a film about roving bands of dirtbag vampires shot exclusively on fluorescent-lit streets and seedy motels hit this low for me. That should be my favorite fucking meal – not just something microwavable.
Near Dark is available to stream on The Criterion Channel.
Special thanks to Austin Smoldt-Sáenz, Elena Bruess, Joshua De Lanoit, and Max Seifert.
To be clear: I love garlic.
Bigelow herself is a fascinating director. Her career has spanned decades, with a preoccupation with manliness and male aggression at its center. This has led to one of the best action movies of all time with Point Break, and a seminal Oscar win with The Hurt Locker. Understandably, her lens on men’s infantile rage hadn’t settled by her second film, but it’s still sad to see how little focus is placed on the character’s violent motivations here.