I Watch Films: Nightwing

Nightwing

In the Arizona desert on an Indian Reservation there have been livestock mysteriously drained of blood. Deputy Durand from the poor Masaki tribe investigates, as does Chee, chief of the richer neighbouring tribal council. Chee has learned that there is shale oil in Masaki canyon, the most scared land.

Abner, a powerful outcast priest, claims to have done a rite that will end the world. Then he dies. More people go missing. There are vampire bats loose and a vampire bat hunter arrives tracking them. He really hates them, and asks for three days to deal with them as the usual way, of dynamiting their roosting caves, will just scatter them. This despite them carrying plague. Chee tries to arrest Durand, but is outfoxed.

The film builds up the scariness of the bats, which the effects can’t deliver on. It talks up the power of Abner and use of the hallucinogenic datura root, which it almost manages to say something about. The use of Native American beliefs marry slightly awkwardly to the film’s ecological concerns.

Watch This: For a horror film that manages to sketch in a time and place, combining ecological concerns, jurisdiction, poverty, Native American beliefs, disease and technology into a whole
Don’t Watch This: The bats are too silly which kicks the supports from the ramshackle way the rest of the film is constructed