The very first thing I wrote down whilst watching Nightbreed: "I don't know what this movie is about but just from the pre-opening credits sequence, I am HERE FOR IT." And the male lead, Craig Sheffer, looked super-familiar [from A River Runs Through It, I guess].
Aaron Boone (Sheffer) is a troubled young man, tormented by dreams of monsters and Midian, the city those monsters live in. He's been in therapy for a while and has made great progress, with a solid job and a solid girlfriend, and he hasn't had the dreams for years. And then his former therapist (played creepily by David Cronenberg) calls him up and says that he thinks Boone is responsible for the brutal slayings of six families over the last ten months. Panicked, Boone runs and, after a chance meeting with a crazy person in the hospital, makes his way to Midian. Which is real. And populated by real monsters, who are generally nice people, just trying to live their lives, in hiding from humans who have persecuted them throughout history. Boone's arrival draws unwanted attention, however, and soon Midian is wracked by conflict, within and without.
Clive Barker's follow-up to Hellraiser, directed by Barker himself and based on his book Cabal, Nightbreed is more dark fantasy, never really scary (although I did jump a couple of times) but with a fair amount of violence and gore. It's a bit cheesy and kind of incoherent (likely from the studio's interference and insistence on changes from Barker's original vision) but the monster make-up, prosthetics and puppets are incredible. I don't know that I'll make the effort to track down the recently released Director's Cut, which is reported to be closer to what Barker intended, but I'm definitely glad I added Nightbreed to this year's watchlist.
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