Entry #11: Near Dark
She's most well-known in the modern era for the kind of gritty dramas that led her to become the first woman ever to direct a Best Picture-winning movie (not to mention becoming the first woman to win Best Director), Kathryn Bigelow got her start as a filmmaker in the world of genre cinema. Thrillers, science-fiction fare, cop dramas, Bigelow did it all and in the process created a number of iconic movies, including Point Break. Her second ever directorial effort was Near Dark, a vampire Western horror film that also stands as one of her most stylized features even among her unabashedly over-the-top genre movie repertoire.
Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) was just your usual cowboy-hat wearing Southern boy, the kind of guy who would grab up a Brad Paisley album the first chance he could if those existed back in 1987. But his life forever changed after he spent some time making out with Mae (Jenny Wright), a mysterious young lady who, in the process of chilling with Caleb, bites him on the neck and turns him into a vampire. Yes, Mae is a vampire and she's not the only one. Mae lives with a gaggle of vampires containing loose cannon Severen (Bill Paxton) and leader Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen) who are all immediately distrustful of newcomer Caleb. Caleb, for his past, has his own hesitations about devouring people in order to survive.
As he adjusts to his new life as a vampire, screenwriters Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red amusingly have Near Dark adhere to some traditional storytelling tenants about any movie where the protagonist is trying to join a long-established social circle. You've got your character mainstays like the character who mistrusts the newcomer to an absurd degree (Paxton's character), the scene where the protagonist struggles to do what comes naturally to the veteran's members of this group and that moment where the aforementioned suspicious archetype begins to warm up to the newcomer they previously despised. Of course, these typical movies usually involve a book club or a troop of police officers, not bloodthirsty vampires.
The juxtaposition of this story structure with the presence of vampires turns out to be wickedly fun, especially since Bigelow and Red cheekily deviate from this familiar story set-up at critical points to help make sure Near Dark doesn't become overly predictable. Bigelow and Red's writing is actually a high point of the entire production, a piece of praise that can't always be said about these kinds of high-concept horror movies that frequently try to get by on blood and guts alone. However, the two screenwriters here show off their screenwriting chops in how they mix up influences with their own flashes of originality. Just look at how the movie takes staples of the Western genre, including boots-and-spurs costumes, a High Noon showdown and even a tumbleweed, and then filters them through its own twisted horror/comedy filter.
Near Dark isn't just content to reference already existing visual elements associated with certain cinematic genres of storytelling, it wants to use them as a springboard for its own visual aesthetic. As a paradoxical as it sounds, Near Dark takes the familiar and manages to create something totally original. Bigelow and Red's writing also shines in terms of creating a cohesive story structure that juggles parallel storylines (Caleb's story and a subplot involving his father and sister searching for him) with impressive ease while the individual characters truly come alive as distinct personalities. This is especially true in regards to the various vampires Caleb and Mae are trapped, they're able to come across as individual human beings rather than just carbon-copies of another.
Much of this comes down to the committed performances found in the case of Near Dark, the best of which is easily Bill Paxton as Severen. Paxton is in full-on scenery-chewing mode here, there's boundless manic energy in his work on-screen that proves to be exceedingly fun to watch. Kudos are also deserved for Adrian Pasdar's lead performance, which works nicely in the opening scenes of emulating traditional male Western protagonists, all tough, strong and all the other adjectives used to describe ideal men in Toby Keith tunes. But in one of Near Dark's most brilliant examples of genre subversion, once Caleb turns into a vampire, he becomes more vulnerable and subservient as he navigates a totally unfamiliar world. A traditional Western lead becomes the total opposite of the usual definitions of a character John Wayne would play, a brilliant storytelling twist that Pasdar portrays impeccably well throughout the delightfully creative Near Dark.
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