Synopsis
Set up as the fall guy in a string of slasher murders, Boone decides he'll hide by crossing the threshold that separates "us" from "them" and sneak into the forbidden subterranean realm of Midian.
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Cast
- Craig ShefferAaron Boone
- Anne BobbyLori Desinger
- David CronenbergDr. Philip K. Decker
- Charles HaidCaptain Eigerman
- Hugh QuarshieDetective Joyce
- Hugh RossNarcisse
- Doug BradleyDirk Lylesberg
- Catherine ChevalierRachel
- Malcolm SmithAshberry
- Bob SessionsPettine
Recommendations
- 70
The Dissolve
At its best, Nightbreed is like a living version of a coffee-table book, with each page filled with tentacled, quilled, or moon-faced monsters. - 60
Empire
The background is more intriguing than the stumbling up-front story, and monster watchers will get full use of the freeze-frame facility. - 58
Entertainment Weekly
Barker spins grisly fantasy out of sexual obsession, yet his style here couldn’t be less obsessive. It’s cluttered and rather incoherent, as though the trailers to four different horror movies had been spliced together. - 50
Chicago Tribune
Barker unleashes the full force of his special effects crew and the movie implodes in a cataclysm of jelly-fleshed creepy-crawlies. It simply loses its grip. [17 Feb 1990, p.3C] - 40
The New York Times
Surrounded by Mr. Barker's visual clutter and lack of narrative energy, Mr. Cronenberg's presence only highlights the difference between a gruesome but first-rate psychological horror story like Dead Ringers and a mediocrity like Nightbreed. - 40
Washington Post
Barker the filmmaker resorts to most of the horror cliches he chillingly sidesteps in his writing. - 40
Variety
Writer-director Clive Barker's Nightbreed is a mess. Self-indulgent horror pic [from his novel Cabal] could be the Heaven's Gate of its genre, of obvious interest to diehard monster fans but a turnoff for mainstream audiences. - 38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Sad to say, poor old Nightbreed fails even as failure - it's bad, but it's not memorably bad. The odor it emits is less the stench of an eternal hell than the stink of a passing purgatory. If nothing is forgiven by the time you've done your time in the theatre, all is certainly forgotten. [20 Feb 1990]
