Near Dark

Before becoming the first woman to win an academy award for directing The Hurt Locker in 2008, Kathryn Bigelow actually cut her teeth in the horror genre. Her second effort in the director's chair was a very stylish and gritty vampire love story, 1987's Near Dark.

A young cowpoke named Caleb, Adrian Pasdar, notices a new face on a night out in his small town. Her name is Mae, Jenny Wright, and Caleb falls instantly for her. The two spend the night talking and getting to know one another. Right before sunrise, they begin to make out and she bites him on the neck before quickly leaving. On his way home, Caleb notices that his body begins to smoke and his skin starts to burn. He hops out of his truck and runs towards his home just as an rv drives up next to him and throws him in. Inside the rv, Caleb finds Mae and a group of bloodthirsty vampires that she travels from town to town with. Mae herself is one of the undead and since biting Caleb, he is one as well. Caleb must figure out a way for the two of them to escape the group and rid themselves of their curse.

This is probably my favorite vampire film. It had the misfortune of opening up around the same time as The Lost Boys and kind of got lost in the shuffle. I, like a lot of people, discovered this gem on video. Bigelow, who cowrote the screenplay with The Hitcher scribe Eric Red, has created a very grisly, sometimes darkly comic, vampire yarn with a love story at it's core. Her use of colors and editing, along with a mesmerizing score from Tangerine Dream, heighten the already intense flick. Bigelow originally envisioned this as a western, but since cowboy movies weren't big at the moment, she tied in the vampire element. It's a nice mix of two different genres.

Pasdar and Wright are terrific as the central characters, but it's the other vamps, Lance Henrikson, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, and Joshua Miller, who steal the show. Especially Paxton who gives a very funny and frightening performance as the somewhat loose cannon of the group.

When this was released on blu ray, the distributor tried to cash in on the fame of Twilight by making the cover look like that of the Twilight poster. I think fans of Twilight will be highly dissapointed. Twilight is fluff, while Near Dark is a very bloody and dark vampire outing.

I can't praise this smart vampire picture enough.

It's available on dvd and blu ray.