In Near Dark, director Kathryn Bigelow’s contemporary vampire Western, we always know where the sun is—or, if it happens to be night, we know how long it will be until the sun appears. The specificity of the movie’s title is brilliant, because it points to this aesthetic strategy. As an itinerant band of merciless bloodsuckers feasts on hitchhikers and barflys along dusty American highways, Bigelow (who wrote the script with Eric Red) and cinematographer Adam Greenberg frequently frame the big orange ball menacingly in the sky, against vast unforgiving landscapes. Even in the deep of night, the vampires nervously glance around, afraid of oncoming rays. Not that we’re rooting for them to survive. As is clear during one of the film’s tense, terrifying set pieces—a murderous “meal” at a dive bar—these are monsters. Our way into their world is Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), an Oklahoma cowboy who unwisely picks up Mae (Jenny Wright), not knowing she’s on the hunt. Bigelow stages their dalliance as a dangerous game of shifting power dynamics—he’s in charge, then she’s in charge, a lasso is involved, then a bite—which presages the filmmaker’s concern, throughout her career, for women struggling to establish their authority in a world of men. Indeed, Mae stands apart from the other vampires, in that she comes to see Caleb as more than meat. Wright and Pasdar are a bit bland in the lead roles, but Bill Paxton more than makes up for that as the sadistic, spur-jangling vampire Severen (he’s almost having too much fun), while Lance Henriksen oozes minimalist menace as the group’s leader, Jesse. Add a moody score by Tangerine Dream—it too wavers in that eerie, existential glow dividing day and night—and Near Dark boasts one of the horror genre’s most unique milieus.
(10/5/2022)
