Nightbreed

Saw Nightbreed, a strange and convoluted film about a dude who is being framed for murder by his serial killer psychologist.  Guided by dreams, he flees to a cemetery on the outskirts of a nearby town where he discovers a city of monster-people who have lived there secretly for many years.  There's a lot going on.

This is one of those films that has a dozen differently edited versions.  I watched the "director's cut" but it was sometimes a bit choppy.  I found myself sort of wishing someone had given it another edit, just to clean up the sloppy bits.  Even as-is, there's a ton going on in the film and a lot of world-building.  This feels like the first in a series or something.

Anyway, this is a film where the "monsters" are sympathetic and turn out to be the good guys.  I was impressed that the monsters actually are fairly monstrous however.  They have children and make jokes and are scared of humans, but they also cavort with rotting corpses and are grotesquely deformed.  Some are even regarded as dangerous and uncontrollable by each other.

The monsters can easily be read as a minority group which has been shunned and marginalized by society.  It's interesting and sort of uncomfortable that the film seems to acknowledge that mixed in with the "monsters" there are also actual monsters.  It's also sort of uncomfortable to see the monsters attacked by over-armed and trigger-happy cops and by a convoy of good ol' boys, piled into trucks and looking remarkably like the Trump caravans of today.  

The film is very dense.  It's not bad, but very busy and fairly messy.  I sort of wish they'd stuck only to the serial killing or to the monster town - both at once is a lot.  Add on top of this the varying levels of world-building and sequel-setup the different cuts provide.  The film blossoms in all directions at once, like a chrysanthemum.  If you dig it, this is maybe a plus, but it seems excessive.  Maybe it's ripe for a remake?