Saw Near Dark, the don't-say-vampire vampire movie. It follows a young dude down in Texas who is seduced and bitten by a sexy vampire chick. Bewildered, he joins her clan. The twist here is that the vampires are not gothy Victorians or corporate ninjas but are dangerous hicks, crowing and yee-hawing their way through murders (The film never actually says the word vampire (even when it would really help explain things.)) It's a very clever and fresh twist. Beyond that central twist there's not a huge amount going on, but what there is is fun.
The protagonist has the pretty-boy looks of a vampire but his vampiric girlfriend has boyish hair and ripped jeans. The climactic showdown involves a shoot-out on main street, but a post-climax mini-showdown features a little boy running down the road, engulfed in flames. It's pretty cool. The mash-up of vampire-film and western is well-done and smooth. Whoever made this film has an excellent ear for tone and mood.
The film tries to make some small symbolic gestures. The film opens with the prosaic image of a mosquito sucking blood. The violence is mixed with sexy close contact and blurry sexuality (at one point, the protagonist must kill or be killed by his clan. They pick out a fairly pretty dude at a bar and offer him up to our hero, saying "he's all for you..." Indeed.) but this is fairly de rigueur for vampire flicks. There's a bit of redemption/damnation going on on a subliminal level. The protagonist is unable to kill anyone on his own and there's an indication that he's not really "one of them" until he does. Nothing new. All in all, it's a very neat genre exercise but not much beyond that. I enjoyed it anyway.
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