We are in 2025 and I just looked for the first time in 1987 – these are my honest thoughts

There is a vast obscurity omnipresent in the beginnings of solo director of Kathryn Bigelow in 1987, “Nark Dark”, which often seems that it could consume anyone. It is so widespread and omnipresent that it looks like the main character on humans of flesh and blood. I suppose that it is natural (and necessary) in a film that concerns nomadic vampires and their life cycle without ends mainly confined to the dead of the night. But the darkness of Bigelow does not only concern the monsters that hide in the shadows, but the beauty, the lust and the attractive independence which attracts them in the first place. There is an incentive that can seduce even the most innocent and mostly hearty men and women, in addition to psychos that are serious to it by nature.

This is how “Near Dark” begins: a distraught and naive man called Caleb (Adrian Pasdar of “Top Gun”) meets a young woman, little and mysterious named Mae (Jenny Wright) in the street, then follows her in the night. He is immediately seduced by her sober glamor, but also feels that there is more for her to discover beyond her appearance. “I have never met anyone like you,” he said to Mae, who instantly takes several meanings.

There is a notable darkness in the script of Eric Red and Eric Red, but also a deep poetry which is still intact almost four decades later. We know right away that Mae is a vampire, but not necessarily his intentions. He flirts and plays with Caleb, but never like a predator with his prey. She likes it enough not to suck his veins and transform it into its kind. She gives him freedom of the night while moving away all the light. But Caleb never asked for this, and when he realizes what he becomes and the group of savages in Mae belongs, he panics and desperately tries from Backpedal. It is however too late. He has two choices: learn to kill and be accepted by the group (led by Jesse de Lance Henriksen), or to become vampires.

Jesse and his team of Sang -Ragtag suckers – Mae, Severen (Bill Paxton), Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein) and Homer (Joshua John Miller) – live like nomads, traveling in the country in a mini -duties, in search of prey and all the pleasure without right their existence of blood. They are linked at night and party every time they have. Although Caleb is somewhat intrigued by all this, thanks to Mae, it is not enough for him to join the crew and leaves his life normal behind. He has a house, a loving father (Tim Thomerson) and a younger sister (Marcie Leeds) who needs him, and he gives up returning to them until he is not completely turned. Before he could reach them, however, he is torn off by Jesse and the others, and forced to obey their rules (learn to kill) or they would cut his existence (vampire).

The story of “Near Dark’s” is simple and minimalist by design – a raw and fierce approach to tell a familiar story – but most do not feel so daring and provocative today that it must have it in the late 1980s. The dialogue is puffy with a poetic shade and often feels silly rather than cool, including the one -liners who are no longer fashionable. But the methodical direction and inspired by Bigelow always contains a punch. His scratch of glamorous masculinity – which has done his subsequent works like the emblematic “Point Break” and the “The Hurt Locker” Hurt Locker “, such as refined and fascinating characters – is already palpable here (if not in full flow), in a setting that mixes classic horror and Western tropes to create a mixture of phantasgoria.

For all the other moments where the dialogue could fail, there is a scene of a gravelly and delightfully crazy bar which swims in blood and abrupt violence, a chaotic and fast shooting paying tribute to the westerns at Haut Octane, or to an old -fashioned duel on the main street where we will learn the effectiveness of a giant truck against a vicious blood. However, it is not the action pieces or the shameless gore that keeps Bigelow’s film for a good time. It is the sinister but strangely attractive environment that the concoction of these different elements is added. Thanks to them, “Near Dark” resembles the horror par excellence of the 80s, retaining a feeling of nostalgia and style as clumsy as it is cool – to say it otherwise, badass leather jackets immortally encountering bad hair.

It would be the negligence of me not to evoke the fantastic actors on which most of the film rests. Although Pasdar does not necessarily lead the quality of man at that time (not to mention today), it was supported by some of the greatest talents of their generation. It is no coincidence that “almost dark” remembers especially the performance of Paxton and Vicious at Paxton as severe, a nasty and bad monster of the night, finding a joyful and bottomless pleasure to kill innocent people. It is a total savage here, dislocated and disgusting, vehemently cackling as a high hyena on raw meat and acting with guaranteed confidence.

Just behind him is Henriksen, the sage and the wise and charismatic “Dracula” of this united group, frequently carrying a diabolical smile which somehow carries the notion of the thousands of victims which he had to assassinate over the centuries. As we know, he has mastered in wickedness, and it is undeniably to the test here. This does not mean that the rest of the distribution does not deliver – Miller’s Homer also obtains a few particularly strange and perverse moments, and Mae de Wright is as fatal as cute – it is simply difficult to stand out next to such big as Paxton and Henriksen.

Overall, despite its faults and sometimes its feeling, “Near Dark” remains a convincing little gem of a horror which demonstrates some of the impeccable skills used later in her career, and who made her one of the most influential directors of her generation. If you have submitted this film for an unknown reason (certainly, I did it), I am here to say that you should no longer. My only advice is to find good humor (being nostalgic with a thirst for old -fashioned vampire films) before pressing this reading button. Then, I hope you will find it as exhilarating, delicious and only entertaining as I am.