I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Near Dark prior to seeing James Wan’s Vampire Watchlist. But then I looked up other lists of classic vampire movies and Near Dark always seemed to be there. So clearly I must’ve missed out.

The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed the forgotten cyberpunk classic Strange Days. So even when her movies aren’t popular, they still seem to find their audience. For Near Dark specifically, its popularity was hurt by being released a couple months after The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys was a more “fun” movie that made vampires at least a little appealing (in an escapist fantasy sort of way), whereas Near Dark shows how being a vampire… kinda sucks. I guess I’d say it’s a more realistic take on vampires, rather than being romanticized like in The Lost Boys. I personally wouldn’t call it a Neo-Western like Wikipedia does though. I think it just takes place in a rural town, and that doesn’t make it a Western to me.

While trying to figure out how I missed this movie, I learned that Kathryn wanted actors for the main vampire group who could act like they were family around each other, since the script had these vampires living together for centuries. So she asked her friend (and later, husband) James Cameron for some ideas. He had just finished filming Aliens so he suggested some of the cast from his movie. And that’s how we end up with a crew of vampires with Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein. So that’s neat.

Overall, I think it’s a fun 80s vampire movie but I’m not sure what makes it a classic. That is, I’m not sure what it did so differently and uniquely that it deserved a spot on classic movie lists. It definitely isn’t bad (and there are a lot of bad vampire movies out there) but being so many decades removed, I can’t tell what it did so uniquely well. Maybe someone here can educate me. Also, I will say that I didn’t like the ending. I’ve discovered that I don’t like vampire movies which end with

Anyway, here’s a trailer. I wonder if there’s some weird rights dispute with this movie because it never seems to be on any streaming services. Even for rent or purchase, it’s just not there. I ended up watching it on the internet archive.