Near Dark

The Gist: A guy meets a beautiful girl who in reality is a vampire. She unwittingly turns him, so he has to join her and her group of vampires. They don't readily accept him though, because he refuses to kill to feed himself. His father and sister, meanwhile, are looking for him, as is the police, on the account of the trail of corpses the vampires are leaving behind.

Because of my love of all things vampire, Near Dark ended up on my list, but I cannot even begin to tell you how bad it is.

The plot is paper thin, the acting has a flair of camp to it that makes it come across as very poor, and the action scenes are overly theatrical and end up looking almost grotesque.

The worst part about it though, is once again the attempt to rewrite vampire lore and cure the unhappy infected one. As I explained before, when you become a vampire, you are no longer a living human being. Your body only endures by feeding it human (preferably) blood and there is no way to go back to having fully functioning organs that will sustain a normal life. Period.

The Bottom Line: Near Dark is a movie I recommend you NOT watch. It's poorly made, badly acted, full of very convenient occurrences, and ultimately just plainly risible and irritating. Skip it, even if it means not admiring the gorgeous Adrian Pasdar for a couple of hours.

Grade: 2