Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) is a small-town hick on his way to full yokel status when he spots Mae (Jenny Wright). After a night of star-gazing (her) and showing off (him), Mae expresses some urgent desire to be home before dawn. Caleb, presuming that she is trying to avoid being beaten by her parental figure, tries to extort sex in exchange for driving her home and gets bitten instead. Turns out the ethereal drifter who waxed poetic about seeing the heat death of the universe is a vampire. Go figure. Mae's found family of amoral killers reluctantly take in Caleb as he turns, criss-crossing the southwest to avoid law enforcement, feeding on whoever they can scam, and trying to teach Caleb the ropes of immortality. But Caleb already has a family and his father (Tim Thomerson) has been searching for him.
This is the watered-down, low budget knock-off of The Lost Boys that's only famous because it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and stars all the people taking a break from filming Aliens. Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are great, as always, but Pasdar can't escape being the Great Value Jason Patric. Part of that is the script's fault. Caleb is written to be as uncool and square as possible to contrast with the hedonistic cowboy-grunge of the vampires and also suffers from a strong shift in social mores about what's acceptable in first-date behavior.
The worst crime here is that there's no internal logic with regard to vampire lore. It feels very half-assed whatever gets to the next scene, and that's really disrespectful to actual vampire fans. Also, the movie feels homophobic without ever saying explicitly that. The vibes are rancid is what I'm saying.
It's not currently available except for rental but it's totally okay to let this film slide further into obscurity.
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