Near Dark

Near Dark is highly praised for being the best vampire movie ever made. However that's like saying that the Pinto is the best car that explodes on impact ever made. Its the tale of a farm boy who falls in love with a wandering stranger that's not like any of the other girls. He then goes on a wild ride with a gang of nomads in a van until sunlight wins the day again.

Well....we don't like this movie. We found it to be a colossal disappointment with some really misses. In that, the primary problem with this film is that Bill Paxton is incredible. You heard it. Bill Paxton does a fantastic acting job. He nails it. He's infectious. He's memorizing. "Why is that a problem?" you might ask. Because there's far too little of him on screen. His role is super limited and angered us. Hey Bigelow, we want more Paxton!

The movie would have been really great would have worked so perfectly as a graphic novel. A graphic novel would have allowed for ongoing stories about the vampire nomads going from town to town and wrecking bars, eating people and running from the fuzz. But there's no story here for a movie. A movie has a limited run time so a full story must be flushed out in that time. This does not happen here. The characters take no internal journey and can be summed up as "boy gets turned into a vampire, boy gets Tim Thomerson blood transfusion, vampires get lit of fire, freezeframe, credits."

I will award the film for it's little amount of exposition. We know what a vampire is. We don't even need to know how these nomads became vampires. We don't need to know the rules of vampires. We don't need to know what these people were doing before they pick up Adrian Pasdar. More films could learn from that.

Now people are going to hem and haw about us saying this is a bad movie. Well here you go, fanboys: a) wipe cuts look awful, b) everyone but Paxton stinks on ice, c) poorly edited, d) vague action sequences, e) breaks its own rules that it sets up, f) there's no continuity with time and locations and g) a blood transfusion will cure vampirism! Really?!?

But in the end, the film is just kinda glittery and too boring to even be a good bad movie. Characters just drive around and then drive around. Nothing happens. There's way too much Twilight business. And not enough Bill Paxton business!!! Boooooooooo.....

Individual Ratings:

Over the top action:
Cheesy effects:
Horrendous acting:
Laugh-out-loud-ability:
Ridiculous stunts:
Gratuitous nudity:
Memorable one-liners:

Overall Ratings:

Good Movie Quality:
Bad Movie Quality: