Nightbreed – Review

A controversial film, Clive Barker disliked the theatrical release of this film. He battled the studio until final theatrical cut, which was a watered-down version which did not meet his vision. A decade and a half later, Barker and some of the crew returned to the film to put original footage back together as intended and repurpose a “Director’s Cut.” This review is of that version specifically, which is longer and differently cut. If at all possible, go for this version of the film, which runs around two hours and is from 2014.

Creepy credits hit immediately with nightmare fuel. Waking from some seriously weird city of monsters dream shit is Aaron Boone (Sheffer), whose girlfriend Lori Winston (Bobby) suggest time away from Calgary for a bit to shake the recurring bad times. Aaron gets a late night and totally normal phone call from his therapist Dr. Philip K. Decker (Cronenberg) who asks for a check-up, and then says ‘don’t let me down’ before ominously looking down into his briefcase. Right-e-o.

Oh, damn, some super seriously creepy masked killer dude is on the loose. Uhhh, so, lots of plots so far, maybe? Things continue to escalate as Aaron meets with his regular therapist guy and things get ugly during the session. Maybe Aaron’s cheese has slid a bit too far off of his cracker.

He begins talking about potentially dead people while he is under hypnosis. Then, made up monster worlds. And… the cops have actual victims which wind up matching Aaron’s descriptions. Things aren’t looking so hot, and we aren’t even scratching the surface yet.

Nightbreed is a pretty wild ride. At first, things get odd, and then they begin to launch into the stratosphere of strange. It features a decent plot idea of two, and okay execution which was caught in studio production hell upon initial release. I like the Director’s Cut along with its freedom and creativity. To fully enjoy this, you have to be the type of viewer to go along with a pretty batshit story. Also knowing how accepting you are of late 80s/early 90s movies will help you understand if you should try this film as well.

While the cast is mostly full of character actors or industry players like David Cronenberg, the whole atmosphere is sort of dreamlike and hallucinogenic, so their work fits fine. As it is a Barker feature, some of it is quite bizarre and a lot of it gets creepy. I think the theatrical cut released by the studio back in the early 90s was probably not the best, and was misunderstood. If you can get the 2014 Director’s Cut, you will at least get a restored expositional vision with more story and cohesion attached.

“There’s a face beneath this face.”