Near Dark

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Near Dark follows Adrian Pasdar’s Caleb Colton as he’s turned into a vampire by Jenny Wright’s Mae and subsequently incorporated into her family of bloodsuckers (which includes Lance Henriksen’s Jesse and Bill Paxton’s Severen). Filmmaker Bigelow, working from a script written with Eric Red, delivers a languidly-paced yet mostly compelling thriller that benefits from its stellar performances and atmospheric execution, as Bigelow does a superb job of establishing the picture’s dreamy, isolated landscape and peppering it with a whole host of memorable figures – with the predictably engrossing work of performers like Henriksen and, especially, Paxton going a long way towards perpetuating the watchable vibe. And although the movie does suffer from a handful of lulls, with the climactic stretch perhaps not as engrossing as one might’ve hoped, Near Dark benefits from a propulsive midsection that boasts several exciting, engrossing sequences – with the best and most apt example of this a fantastic set-piece that transpires within a remote country bar. The end result is a better-than-average vampire movie that ultimately fares better than most other similarly-themed endeavors, and it’s not difficult, certainly, to see why Near Dark has managed to endure in the years since its 1987 release.

*** out of ****