THE CHILL OF THE NIGHT : THE HOUR IS "NEAR DARK"

Kathryn Bigelow is a director that has begun to draw my attention more and more in the last couple of years. Her films, I have discovered are not as “one layered” as they may look to the untrained eye. I mean, she is far from being my favorite director ever, and yes, her films may well contain rather nationalistic messages on one level (I’m thinking of the Hurt Locker specifically) but her films also have depth. Which makes them actually fascinating to watch. What I have in mind for this week is her first solo feature film, made in 1987. And actually it’s quite in keeping with modern times. It’s all about vampires. Living in a small town in rural America, Caleb is a bona fide modern cowboy. He lives on the ranch with his father and his little sister and lives a pretty ordinary life until, one fateful night, he runs into Mae. And a little bit of passion leads for a lot more than Caleb has bargained for. Mae is one of a band of vampires who roam the land in stolen cars and pretty much do whatever the heck they want. Now Caleb is not too unhappy about the turn of events, he loves Mae and would, in theory quite like to spend eternity with her if it weren’t for the minor issue of having to kill people to survive. That and the whole pillaging, stealing, low moral standards bit. The “gang” is quite aware that Caleb is not one of them on so many levels and this brings his already shaky existence into even more peril. Will young love find a way out? Can Caleb carve out a place for himself among the night folk? We seem to be all about crossing different genres with Westerns today. Because in her backstage interview (yes I’m the kind of nerd who watches the extras) Bigelow openly says that her aim was to cross a Western with a horror movie. And Near Dark functions exactly in this way. I do not really mind the crossed with a western bit to be honest. Heck, it is pretty much the granddaddy of True Blood in that sense. Caleb (played by Adrian Pasdar- who I've just realised is Nathan Petrelli from Heroes. For those who watch the series) is a good, old fashioned good guy, complete with square jaw. Mae is a lovely contrast to him, thin, waif-like and pale. I have to say, there are a few tropes that have kind of got old – the child-vampire / adult stuck in a child’s body for example (I find the fascination with this trope rather odd actually. It possibly has something to do with the fact that it’s usually the reverse, a child in an adult’s body connoting immaturity but anyhow, moving on…). All in all Bigelow does something clever with the vampires, namely, she sticks to all the major rules but rewrites other stuff. I mean the end of the film is brilliant really, on the one hand it’s a rather fairy tale “solution” to the problems brought up throughout the film but on the other hand the very last scene / frame even if you look closely is a bit of critique of the solution offered. I don’t know, it’s worth watching carefully. The motley crew of vampires is made up largely of the cast of Alien (Lance Henriksen, Bil Paxton, Jeanette Goldstein for example) which, the backstage footage also confirms, gives the whole thing very much a family feel. But that is, you see, precisely as it should be. In fact the “family” feeling in the film is so well portrayed that you can’t help secretly and ever so slightly sympathizing with the “baddies”. I mean, they work so well together. Oh you know what I mean. Yes you do. I mean, we know we’re not supposed to but at the end of the day quite a few of us sympathize with the baddies deep down inside. And this is a group of baddies that is particularly easy to sympathize with. Interesting film all in all. Don’t be taken in by the ‘80s feel, give it a whirl.