Finding it hard to understand the great deal of appreciation for this.

I just watched it for the first time based on score and cast....pretty disappointing. I'm sure when it came out it was good and nostalgia is a helluva drug for many....but to fresh eyes in 2013 this film was far from a 7.0 rating.

More like 4/10.

I'm watching it as I type...I am in the middle of the bar scene..and I am wishing that Blade would show up and waste all of these trailer park trash vampires...they have no style.

The problem most people have with this movie is that it is not the your typical horror movie.

People see bill paxton andmost likely think "man he is bloody this is gona be bloody good.
And then they find thems elf in what i like to cal atmospheric horror, it is slow paced and it is more about characters then the horror.
Yes the movie is slow paced and to me the end made little sence.
But the characters are well crafted, they are evil but there is an underlying theme to them.
They were vampires although that word is never used.

HomAr ( people always seem to get it wrong he spells his name with an a and not an e) was a sad creature, he felt misunderstood, he was a 40 year old man in the body of a child. Even he wanted to have s*x people wouldnt becuas of the way he looked. he had turned mae as a sort of sister thing, someone who would also turn old in a young body, but when caleb got turned that dream shattered, and finding a young girl around his looking age would give him just that. Seeing the places they went to to feed he never met a child his "age" as it was late in the night and most slept around that time. that is why there is a obsession , he had within reach something he longed for.

In most movies vampires are thrilled they will live forever but Homar did not feel that way as he was misunderstood by the rest in the group.


Yes caleb and mea their chemistry did not reallyw ork for me either and caled is kinda scary when he parks the car and makes her kiss him.

But for the rest i think that homar thing and the underlying kinship they have is what makes this movie so enjoyable, it is not the your avverage vampire movie, they could have been a family of mass murders and not just vampires that kill .

what doesn't kill you hasn't been done properly.

I saw this on VHS a few years after it was made. It was a unique concept for a horror movie(Outlaw hillbilly vampires, whoda thunk it?)but an enjoyable one. But the problem I had with it was none of the vampires had FANGS. Vampires have to have fangs. It was a low budget movie obviously but so low budget that the producers couldn't have gotten some cheap ones for the actors and effergripped them on?
Still, it was a Kathy Bigelow directed film so it came out pretty good.
I just watched part of it tonight and I'm sorry to say that Adrian Pasdar is the victim of retro-typecasting. I was thinking Nathan Petrelli(Heroes) as a teenager.

Yeah it's trite as feck, I think it's one of those movies that you had to have seen when it was fairly new to appreciate for nostalgic reasons in this day and age... Comparing this with Lost Boys is like comparing Justin Bieber with Michael Jackson

I'm gonna refuse you an offer you can't make

it started out great but went down pretty hard, i would have liked it more if the story concentrated more on Caleb and Mae's relationship






so many movies, so little time

To an extent I understand what the OP means, and I love this movie. My guess is the OP is under 35 and watched it bc he heard great things about it, but like he said, it was good but not cult status. For me, the best way to explain it is to say back when it came out, there were no vampire movies like it. You had your Dracula vampires, and Salem's Lot ones, but the Lost Boys may be the only thing close to it at the time. People were hungry for a new type of vampire movie where they were cool and different I think. You also have the group who was originally drawn to it like myself bc of the number of people who were in Aliens. And there is always something cool about liking a movie that wasn't a block buster that you thought was cool and could recommend.
And last, I also attribute it to that local restaurant you had and loved growing up. It was only in your town and everyone loved it there. So when a friend from out of town comes, you want to take them there and you are expecting them to rave about it and love it like you do. To your dismay, they say it's good. Nothing great and certainly not bad, but not the life changing experience you wanted them to have. Part of what you love about it you realize, is not that the food is amazing, but it's the memories and experiences you had there that helped make you love the restaurant so much. The food is good but it's the total package of memories that no one can experience in one visit. I have had this experience many times when I have recommend Near Dark. And the younger the people are, the more they seem to not understand the hype. I have no longer tried to convert people to Nesr Dark. I recommend it, but my expectations that anyone new watching it will appreciate as much as I do is pretty much gone. And I actually understand why. But for me it will always be a special movie.

I agree. Its not a bad movie, but I don't get the praise for it either.

Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried