Nightbreed, The Director's Cut Review (Film, 1990) #31DaysOfHorror
content warning: blood, gore, violence against women, animal death, death by suicide
Aaron suffers from bad dreams. He visits a city called Midian where monsters are a real and accepted part of reality. His girlfriend Lori convinces him to see a therapist, Dr. Decker, to work on his issues. Decker promptly convinces Aaron he committed a brutal series of murders and has to confess his crimes to the police. An accident puts him on a path straight to Midian. Midian is real.
Nightbreed is a dark fantasy/horror film written and directed by Clive Barker, adapted from his own novella Cabal. The Director’s Cut marks a significant change in intentions. Essentially, Barker signed a three picture deal with Morgan Creek, with the films being distributed by Fox. Cabal (now Nightbreed) was the first. Little changes were requested along the way, like a new title or a change in the ending, that led to a very different film. The original Nightbreed was two and a half hours long; the studio requested an hour be cut from the runtime, leading the editor to walk out of the project and the cuts to still happen. The Director’s Cut is 20 minutes longer than the original release, but actually restores 45 minutes of footage total that was cut from the theatrical version.
This is a weird film and that’s a compliment. Clive Barker’s vision of horror pulls heavily from fantasy, making it very difficult to predict what is going to happen in any given moment. His work consistently plays with the idea that anyone could be a monster under the right circumstances, and we’re all driven by the same instincts in the end. This is psychological horror driven by physical desire, and physical desire can include incredible pain.
The look of a monster can make or break a horror film. The challenge in adapting Clive Barker’s work is figuring out what the monster actually looks like. His work is rich with details, but he often leaves a lot to the imagination. The monsters of Midian are important to Cabal, but their appearance is a suggestion as they hide from humanity.
In Nightbreed, the monsters are exaggerations of human forms. From just the right angle, they’re almost human. Then they turn and you see an exaggerated brow ridge or hair made of flesh. The Nightbreed are monsters born from humans, transformed and accepted into a society that will take anyone who isn’t innocent. It’s Barker’s vision of the hidden world made visible onscreen.
That isn’t to say the monsters are the only villains in the story. Clive Barker loves dealing with the ambiguity of morality. The physical monster is often inhuman, but actually sticks to its code of laws and ethics. The humans don’t always do the same.
If you’ve never seen the Director’s Cut of Nightbreed, I encourage you to watch. It is an entirely different experience. It feels like the most Clive Barker film, which is certainly high praise for the right audience. This is a brutal dark fantasy story presented through the lens of horror. While this version of the story may never really feel complete, it is a satisfying journey into another world.
Nightbreed, The Director’s Cut is streaming on Shudder.
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