Many, many years before Kathryn Bigelow became famous for the release of The Hurt Locker, the director released Near Dark. The film tells the story of a traditional nuclear family that tries to conceal their true identities. They are vampires, but Bigelow goes to great lengths during the film to make sure the actual word is never uttered by any of the characters. Jesse Hooker (Lance Henrikson) is the head of the family, and after trying to turn a human - Caleb - over to their ways and ultimately failing, the family pursue the escapee across the state to try and stop him from revealing their dark secret. Jesse Hooker's patriarchal protection of his family is brilliant, and with the film blending both the vampire and western genres together, it did something remarkably new when many vampire films at the time had been more comical in their subject matter. Herikson's performance as Hooker proved that vampires could be scary again. And while the vampires in the film certainly weren't good people, they showed that they still valued family above all else.
Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.
