NIGHTBREED

I wasn’t a fan of Nightbreed when it was released in 1990. It’s been 30 years, so I figured, let’s give it another shot.

I was excited during its initial marketing campaign. We were introduced to the various monsters via a center-spread advertisement in issues of “Sandman” and “John Constantine” comic books. It looked promising: here was another Clive Barker vision, like Hellraiser before it, thumbing his nose at the cinematic tradition of keeping creatures in shadows and displaying them out in the light in all their sinister glory. 

The story is intriguing enough: handsome, Calgarian Boone is seeking behavior therapy for his detailed nightmares of murder and mayhem; they call him to a mythical city called Midian (a Jerusalem of sorts for monsters). His psychotherapist (played to the nines by David Cronenberg) uses Boone’s therapy tapes as a scapegoat for his own killing spree (he’s a masked serial murderer on his off-hours) and targets him to the authorities. One thing leads to another, and Boone finds himself in the wilds of Northern Alberta in Midian, found under a weird, gothic graveyard, and congregating with the Tribes of the Moon (monsters and super-powered freaks) hiding from the cruel persecution of mankind.

Clive Barker said he wanted to make the “Star Wars of horror” and the film is rife with Joseph Campbell and religious symbology: Boone as the Christ figure; Cronenberg as a forked-tongue Devil nudging mankind to eradicate the Chosen few. The concept is great. The execution isn’t. 

The monsters themselves aren’t that interesting. It’s difficult to find sympathy with them as they come across as either overly grotesque or sociopathic. And because there’s so many of them (and only so much run-time), we don’t actually get to understand who they are; their deformity or power becomes their personality trait instead of their relationship to each other or Boone.

Worse yet is the tone. It’s all over the place. There’s barely any dread for a horror film (when there is, it’s due to Cronenberg’s character). There’s gravity in Boone’s journey, the bond he shares with his girlfriend, the mystery of what Midian is — and the dark nature of Cronenberg’s psychopath. But, again, the monsters are played too broad and stereotypical (like John Wick villains, they seem to know they’re stereotypes and have committed to the packaging). And the humans — the Albertan cops, the drunk priest, the rifle-wielding rednecks — holy shit, they are nothing but cartoonish at best. The final battle should have been a rousing push-back between David (the monsters) and Goliath (xenophobic humanity) instead of a hollow editing exercise. 

It’s a shame; I love most of Barker’s work put to screen: Hellraiser, Candyman, Midnight Meat Train, Book of Blood. It’s a shame Nightbreed falls into Rawhide Rex and Lord of Illusion territory.