Near Dark | 100 Movies Bucket List

I'd never heard of this film before seeing it on the bucket list, and seeing that it was another vampire film didn't really fill me with confidence. But the fact that it's directed by Kathryn Bigelow really intrigued me, as this isn't the kind of film I'd associate with her. 

I didn't love this one unfortunately. 

From the start it feels a lot more grounded than a typical vampire movie. It's very rooted in reality. 

It gets into things right from the start. It takes less than 15 minutes for our main character to be bitten, which is great. We know what we're here for, we know what vampires are, we don't need a long explanation.

The characters aren't the most interesting. We only ever get to know them in this situation, so while the vampire aspect is interesting, it gets old, and eventually we have to be able to either connect with, or somewhat like, the characters to stay interested in the story. 

The issue is that some of them are two-dimensional and don't have that much to do, while others aren't that entertaining to watch despite having a backstory.

It took me a while to really get into the story. It opened well, but from there it just didn't interest me as much as I needed it to. Even taking the characters away, the story itself wasn't grabbing me. 

It would have been nice to feel more of a connection and have more development with either of the families, particularly as this becomes more important towards the end of the movie. The actors played off of each other well, but if you told me the characters had met a week ago I would have believed it.

Speaking of the actors, they all do a great job with their characters - it would have been great to see some of the supporting actors have a bit more to work with in terms of the character development.

It did get more entertaining towards the end but that wasn't enough to make up for the first 3/4 of the movie.

Overall, this probably isn't one that I'd watch again. I like the idea of a grounded vampire movie, but the characters weren't interesting enough for me to like the film as a whole.