#Near Dark Is A Western Horror That Reworks The Captivity Narrative

Which gets us to the weirdest and most unusual part of “Near Dark,” which is that vampirism is a relatively easy process to reverse. All it requires is a blood transfusion from Tim Thomerson’s manly dad arms in a process that makes absolutely no logical sense and all of the metaphorical sense. Caleb is now human again, having survived among the hostiles and maintained his moral superiority. In the most profound inversion of the film, he’s come out of an experience that’s almost exclusively the province of young women as a much stronger man. He doesn’t need his dad’s help to kill Severen or rescue his sister Sarah from Homer’s predatory designs in the backseat of a car, though she does a solid job of rescuing herself by clocking him in the head with a Maglite. Jesse cannot protect his beloved Diamondback from the Oklahoma sun, but Caleb manages to save both Sarah and Mae. We are back in very, very familiar Western territory.

And yet: love may not be love which alters when it alteration finds; but in paranormal romances, the alteration is the point. Either the monstrous love interest changes himself for the human protagonist, modifying his behavior so that they can have a relationship, or the human protagonist eventually becomes a monster to share an equal life with her lover. In a Western captivity narrative, the goal is to rescue the loved one and bring her home safe and unchanged by her ordeal, if at all possible. That Caleb’s experience has altered him for the better and turned him into the hero is a very odd commentary on the nature of that experience, harrowing as it was. Becoming a vampire made him understand what it was to be human, and especially what choices are necessary to stay with the ones you love. It has also made him realize what it really means to love someone without coercion or manipulation. Mae has obviously figured out the same thing, which is why she makes a similar choice by saving Sarah.

When Mae bombs out the back of the station wagon with Sarah in her arms, she has every expectation of dying, which is her real sacrifice. Rejecting her vampire family is rather less of a concern. Earlier, I referred to Jesse’s crew as drifters, which isn’t really accurate. To drift implies a current by which to be pulled along. “Near Dark’s” vampires move in something closer to Brownian motion, where particles bounce off each other at random. They feed every night and then flee in yet another stolen vehicle, relying on the ineptitude of small-town cops to escape. For all that Mae says “we can do whatever we want,” they have a grind that redefines Sisyphean. It might be nice to occasionally have a change of clothes, if we’re feeling really off the chain. Also, I miss Bill Paxton desperately, but spending a century with Severen looks exhausting.

Ultimately, it’s less about what Mae is giving up than what she is gaining. After the events of the past two years, I am confident in saying that the most fantastical element of “Near Dark” is the ability to reintegrate yourself after trauma. It’s not a cop-out, as an early reviewer sneered. It’s what we dream about when we’re going through strife and misery: this will be over someday; life will be better; we will be better. This isn’t a simple fantasy of reversal, either; things will not be the way they were. When Caleb tells Mae that he’s brought her home, he doesn’t mean Sweetwater, TX but rather Fixx, OK.

The Western fantasy of being man enough to save someone you love rarely takes into consideration what saving really means. It’s not enough just to rescue someone from immediate peril. If you really care about them, you’ll do whatever is necessary after the glamorous part to ensure that they are genuinely complete again and don’t have to live in fear. For Ethan, that means staying outside and away from Debbie. For Caleb, it means coming inside to reassure Mae that dawn is no longer death and the light streaming across the threshold is a new beginning. Pray for daylight.