#313 -- Near Dark (1987)

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Rating: 2 / 5

I'm going to start by completely negating the purpose of this review. Regardless of anything I say here, you should experience this movie on your own. Apparently, it's got a healthy following, and a lot of people really love it. I appreciate what it was trying to do, but I definitely didn't love it. The only reason I even wanted to watch it was for Adrian Pasdar, who was in my favorite television show. I wanted to see what he looked like back in the '80s.

So, here's the deal. Country boy Caleb (Pasdar) meets a beautiful girl late one night. He's immediately drawn to her, takes her on a little date, and then offers to drive her home. But he refuses to take her all the way home until she gives him a kiss. One thing leads to another, and that kiss turns into a bite, changing Caleb's life forever. He almost makes it home when the girl, Mae, and her family swoop him up in their RV and get him wrapped up in their vampire life. Most of the family didn't want Caleb around, and they wanted him to prove himself by killing; but he couldn't do it. He just wasn't cut out to be a vampire. He found his place among them, though, by not being afraid to fight to keep them safe.

What most people like about this movie is that, even though it's somewhat modern, it takes things back to the way vampires used to be. I don't see it like that. These guys are nothing like Dracula. I do like it when horror movies are set out in the desert. It gives them a romantic yet gritty feel, which is always nice. These guys didn't kill only for feeding purposes, and their fangs weren't their only weapons. They fed on humans, of course, but sometimes they killed just for the sake of killing, it seemed. It focused more on the human side of the vampires, rather than the undead side. These people were crooks before they were turned, and that lifestyle stayed with them even after death. They lived like outlaws, even more so than they would if they were regular vampires. All of this is well and good, and I'm glad it stuck to the proper vampire mythos. But it doesn't change the fact that the movie was boring. There were a few good action scenes, but they weren't enough. Even the romance wasn't enough to make it extremely interesting to me. The best thing was Bill Paxton as one of the vampires. He was definitely malicious, and he made the movie. Other than that, I felt that the movie as a whole was pretty boring.

Like I said, though, you should experience it for yourself. A lot of people really enjoy it, and you might too. Just because I didn't doesn't mean that you won't.