Review: Nightbreed

Boone (Craig Sheffer) is troubled by vivid nightmares of a place called Midian that seem to be calling to him, a place filled with demonic creatures. His psychiatrist Dr. Decker (David Cronenberg) assures Boone that Midian isn’t real and that Boone is the one responsible for a series of serial killings. After being committed to an asylum, Boone escapes and goes in search of Midian, ‘where the monsters live’, but before long the local law have taken up arms and headed in search of Midian too, putting its inhabitants at serious risk. Anne Bobby plays Boone’s worried main squeeze, Hugh Quarshie and Charles Haid are the gun-happy local law, and the inhabitants of Midian are played under heavy make-up by the likes of Hugh Ross, Oliver Parker, Nicholas Vince, and as their resident sage Doug Bradley.

 

I can admire “Hellraiser” but I’ve always found it a touch too chilly for my horror/fantasy tastes and much prefer this imaginative 1990 horror/fantasy from writer-director-author Clive Barker (“Hellraiser”, “Candyman”). One of the first horror-ish films I ever saw, it actually has some similarities to the “X-Men” films oddly enough, with its ‘who are the real monsters?’ theme. One of the first monsters we see here looks a bit like Nightcrawler, too. The makeup and overall design of the worldview (or underworld-view perhaps) is wildly imaginative and very Clive Barker. Meanwhile, Danny Elfman (“Batman”, “Sleepy Hollow”) offers up an excellent, very identifiably Danny Elfman score. It might even be one of his best. I’m not sure why Craig Sheffer’s career never quite took off (it’s sad to see him in the incoherent mess that is “Hellraiser: Inferno”), but here he has a dark intensity that makes him perfect for the lead. Among the Nightbreed, Hugh Ross gives a memorable turn as Narcisse, he’s unsubtle but fun. A heavily made-up Oliver Parker and Nicholas Vince are probably the most interesting of the rest. Parker, oddly enough is now best known for directing “St. Trinians” and “Johnny English Reborn”, but here in front of the camera he’s interesting as perhaps the most bloodthirsty of the otherwise largely misunderstood ‘monsters’. Less interesting is Pinhead himself Doug Bradley, who is just OK as a kind of benevolent mixture of Pinhead, Moses, and Merlin the Magician. In a bit of stunt casting we get Canadian director David Cronenberg as Sheffer’s psychiatrist who reveals himself very early on to be frankly unstable. It’s an uneven performance because Cronenberg isn’t an actor, but he has a flat, dispassionate quality that is occasionally quietly unsettling. He actually gets better the more unhinged his character reveals himself to be. I also love the mask he wears during the murders. The only truly bad performance in the film comes from Charles Haid, and it’s probably the only real flaw with the film. He’s completely over-the-top as a gung-ho lawman to the point of jarring with the rest of the film.

 

It’s a really nice directorial job by Barker, it’s been very well-shot. Don’t get me wrong, he proved to be a good visual stylist on “Hellraiser” too, but here in particular having Midian set beneath a cemetery it allows for some great visuals both above and below ground. Even something as simple as the shot of some blood-stained tomatoes rolling across a kitchen floor during one of the murders is well-done. It’s an image that has stayed with me ever since I first saw the film, for some reason.

 

A one-of-a-kind dark fantasy film from writer-director Barker, though apparently the cut I’ve seen was assembled without his input. Yes, there’s certainly elements of “Hellraiser” here and there, but not in a derivative way. This is much more dark fantasy than horror, though there’s still some violence and assorted weirdness. Wonderful to look at and listen to, with a really interesting subterranean worldview. You end up wishing you could spend more time in Midian. I liked this one more than “Hellraiser”, it’s more ambitious and certainly funnier (largely thanks to Hugh Ross), but the characters are mostly more interesting too. The first hour is particularly excellent, this is a seriously underrated genre film.  

 

Rating: B+