Review of Near Dark (1987) by Chet K — 03 Feb 2013

This hasn't aged too well, but Near Dark is interesting when viewed as part of Bigelow's body of work; in particular the lead up to Point Break with The Loveless, Near Dark and Blue Steel. Her first film - a short - which I have not seen, features two men beating eachother to a pulp in an alleyway whilst the audio is dubbed by two professors analysing the philosophy of the violence.

This characterises her career which peaks at Point Break and Hurt Locker. Near Dark builds on her thesis of the patriarchal family unit, masculinity, gender and violence. On a surface level it's features some cool genre bending - merging the vampire/horor with the western.

Notably Bigelow plays with genre conventions to express ideas that she is interested in. For example, the vampire film already turns the feminine/masculine idea on its head by featuring a feminised male-vampire protagonist (such as Dracula) who uses his sexuality as seduction and weapon - a power typically attributed to a female in cinema, but Bigelow reverses this by retuning the seduction role to the female.

This plays out nicely in the opening scene where we think that Caleb is the vampire but it is actually turns out to be Mae. The male vampires then have more traditional brutish masculine roles closer to black hats from a Western.