Sunday, October 29, 2017

Movie Review: "Nightbreed" (1990)

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Movie"Nightbreed" (Director's Cut)
Director: Clive Barker
Year: 1990
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours, 00 minutes

A young man named Aaron Boone has weird visions of demons and a place called Midian. After he is framed as a serial killer, Aaron seeks out the place from his dream, but when he is gunned down by police, he decides to take up residence in Midian and join the demon-like creatures he once feared.

Clive Barker is a fairly well-recognized name when it comes to the horror genre. Despite that recognition, he has actually only directed three theatrically released feature-length films. The first is his movie, 1987's S&M inspired "Hell Raiser." Another one of his features is the 1995 flick "Lord of Illusion," and the last is this film, "Nightbreed." It stars Craig Sheffer as Aaron Boone, a young man who regularly dreams of demon-like creatures and the place called Midian where they are said to live. He tells his psychiatrist Dr. Decker, played by David Cronenberg, about his dreams. Dr. Decker then convinces Aaron he is responsible for a string of murders that have happened and that he is a serial killer, but doesn't know it because of his mental condition. After hearing this, Aaron goes in search of Midian and discovers it is very much a real place. Unfortunately, the police catch up with Aaron and gun him down. Once he is dead, he is allowed to join the monsters of this town, but their home is threatened and he must now lead them in a battle against the invading humans.

The one thing we can say about Clive Barker is he has quite the imagination when it comes to dark and macabre visuals. We saw the manifestation of his visions in "Hellraiser" and he continues that trend here in "Nightbreed." No matter how poorly constructed the narrative may be, it is at least visually interesting and awesomely bizarre. There is a lot of fabulous makeup work and tons of excellent visual effects implemented on the creatures of "Nightbreed," both of which are brought to life by Bob Keen and Geoffrey Portass. As we mentioned, the story isn't the best and the characters aren't exactly well developed. There are still a lot of tropes going on, like the easily manipulated police officers who seem to be a horror genre staple. That being said, we were still fairly entertained by the action and the visuals and were kept fairly engaged all the way through. It's not the greatest movie film ever, but still a fun time and is worth checking out for those who want to see all of Clive Barker's films.


My Rating: 6/10
BigJ's Rating: 7/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 36%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?

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