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Mixing genres can sometimes revitalize both genres in the end. Cowboys and vampires is not a bad idea, but executed poorly and it could be a joke. Adding the gang metaphor to the mix as well, NEAR DARK handles the tone fine, but is a near miss in most other departments.

Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar, TV’s HEROES) is a cowboy who picks up the pretty stranger Mae (Jenny Wright, TWISTER) one night. He thinks she’s different from all the girls of his small Texas town, which is true because she’s a member of a roaming gang of vampires. And when Adrian wants to neck with her right before dawn, he’ll get bit, turning him into a creature of the night. Now Caleb has a choice — get his head lobbed off or join the gang. However, to join the gang, he has to kill and drink his victim’s blood. The other gang members, which include leader Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen, THE RIGHT STUFF), wild Severen (Bill Paxton, FRAILTY), punked out female Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein, ALIENS) and loose canon kid Homer (Joshua Miller, RIVER’S EDGE), don’t think Caleb is cut out for the immoral, immortal life. As Caleb struggles with the draw of the gang, his father Loy (Tim Thornerson, WHO’S HARRY CRUMB?) and little sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds, BEACHES) go on the road searching for him.

One of the chief problems is that the film spends no time developing its characters. It just starts off with Caleb picking up the wrong girl. We never see him interact with his family or see what his life is like. This makes his conflict with joining or not joining the gang weak. Vampires as a metaphor for violent gangs worked much better in THE LOST BOYS from the same year.

Director/writer Kathryn Bigelow (STRANGE DAYS), along with co-writer Eric Red, weaves in many of the vampire and Western conventions. Many of the vampire moments are stuff we’ve seen before. There aren’t twists to anything except what turns out to be a pretty lame cure for vampirism. The Western moments like the final showdown in the street and the bar fight are nice, but are played to conventionally. Nothing builds much suspense. The story takes its time, but often seems like it doesn’t know where it’s going or at worst it’s just spinning its wheels. In the end, the film feels like a collection of set pieces and not a cohesive whole.

As for those set pieces, visually the shoot out with the cops is inspired. The bullets piercing the walls of the room don’t hurt the vampires, but the beams of light through the holes are another story. Yet, Caleb’s participation in the shoot out doesn’t fit with his character, proving that the set pieces are more important than the protagonist. The bar fight tries to build suspense, but revels too much in its killings, taking too long to play out. The final showdown lacks logic at every turn. Because the set pieces take precedent over character, we don’t care very much for Caleb’s dilemma. We never care about his family. Thornerson’s character is a total plot device and a poor one at that. Paxton is the only one who has a chance to flesh out his role. The cocky, foul-mouthed punk is the highlight of the whole film. Bring equal parts humor and menace, Paxton steals every scene he is in.

NEAR DARK presents an interesting premise, but lacks the characters to pull it off. Caleb never is or never turns into a Western hero or a black hat-wearing villain. The character is never developed consistently, so we lose interest. We don’t even get a gang of good villains. Outside of Severen, it’s stock bad guy central. The Western vampire mix is new, but there’s nothing in the plot that we haven’t seen before. NEAR DARK isn’t a victim of the undead, but the plague of style over substance.