Day 11 of my 31 Days of Vampire Movies answers a promise I made back on Day 4, when I said I’d feature the most punk vampire movie of all time. So here it is.
The Lost Boys was a fun punk vampire movie. Near Dark is dark as fuck. This movie is nihilistic as all hell, bloody, and doesn’t pull its punches even a fraction. These vampires aren’t lovers. They aren’t romantic, and they’re human only so much as it takes to lure their victims in close enough to kill. And even then, if you look close enough, you can see through their disguise pretty easily.
Near Dark is a modern western. On the surface, the premise seems silly. A group of traveling vampires move from town to town like a gang of rustlers, running amok until they move on to the next, leaving a trail of destruction and dead bodies behind them. The main couple have a sort of Romeo and Juliet thing: young lovers trapped between their two different worlds, but they are honestly the least interesting parts of the movie. Vampires Jesse and Diamondback are the real love story, if love was painted in blood and viscera. They are the patriarch and matriarch of the band, but you also know they are ultimately all about each other, everyone else be damned. You see the passion between them, and understand the lengths they are willing to go to both for each other and their way of life.
Like I said, this movie is dark. The barroom scene with Bill Paxton’s Severen is a horror show, when the vampires turn on the patrons and show them absolutely no mercy. It shows just how deadly and dangerous the vampires are, and how squishy and helpless human beings actually are, shotguns be damned.
If you’ve never seen this one, you definitely need to check it out. Vampires come in all flavors these days, and a lot of them, ironically, show the more human side of humanity dealing in themes of loss, unrequited love, etc. Not these fuckers. Show ‘em the softer part of you and they’re going to rip them wide open and laugh while they do it.