Near Dark

I do not understand this movie’s cult following at all. This is a mess of a movie, suffering from a constant identity crisis, and some of the worst editing and dialogue I’ve seen in a movie that isn’t made by Asylum. Let’s start with the tone. So many people praise it for a supposed blend of biker, country, and vampire culture, but it doesn’t do any of that. This is what happens if you take The Lost Boys, strip out the humor and the style, and run it through a Marlboro ad. It’s the kind of country mentality you find at a chain restaurant: gaudy, obvious cliches. It’s infected with camp, but never wants to embrace it, so the movie is stuck between two worlds but occupies neither, never as dark or gothic or creepy as it wants to be, and preventing itself from being as silly or zany as it’s true nature intends. The movie literally fights itself every minute and ends up strangling all the potential out of itself. The dialogue is some of the worst garbage I’ve ever heard. The final showdown is so riddled with stock lines, you’d swear they got a book of screenwriting cliches to avoid and did the opposite on all of them; “you let her go, this doesn’t concern her!” and similarly hoary crutches nobody would ever say. It doesn’t help that this is all acted straight (except for Bill Paxton, who is all over the damned place and the only energy this movie has). And the editing is equally terrible; near the end, in the span of three cuts, it goes from dawn to pre-dawn to a shot of the sun rising to full daylight, and this is supposed a scene taking place over the span of a minute or so. There’s a shot during a showdown where you see someone sneak up behind the hero, it cuts away to the main bad guy, cut back to a shot of the hero and the other bad guy is sneaking back into frame again. The continuity and editing is just horrendous. This continuity issue the worst when it comes to the vampiric curse and it’s powers and limitations. Two vampires are exposed to sunlight for the same period of time; one bursts into flames, one just smolders. One can shrug off a gunshot, one can’t. The rules change to whatever is dramatically necessary. And if all of this wasn’t enough, apparently vampirism can be cured by a blood transfusion! Imagine that! Never mind that they outright say vampirism KILLS you; just pump some new O- in them, and not only is it cured, they’re alive again! As the movie wore on, I kept waiting for this cult classic to break out, for the bizarre, mismatched components to coalesce into something magic. But it never did. It came together like oil and water. It’s a mess of poorly executed ideas, terrible filmmaking, atrocious script-writing, and ham-fisted acting. It wants to ooze style and coolness, but it’s as stylish as the Steve Buscemi “how do you do, fellow kids” meme. It somehow manages to take parts and make them less than the whole.