When it comes to magical fantasy kingdoms, you’ll find countless flavors and styles. This film wants you to crawl underground and spend some time with a collection of creatures that are not too pleasant. Some have extra limbs, others look like they crawled out of somebody’s worst nightmare, and a few are difficult to describe without making you sick to your stomach. That’s the peculiar achievement of Nightbreed, Barker’s 1990 dark fantasy movie that imagines a world where the monsters might be the only people worth rooting for.
Barker had already made a name for himself with Hellraiser. Following up on that, Nightbreed gave him an opportunity to build something considerably bigger. Its underground city of Midian isn’t just another creepy location for a horror movie. It’s an entire civilization with its own inhabitants, history, and mythology. And the more you learn about these creatures, the harder it becomes to see them as the villains.
Based on Barker’s novella Cabal, Nightbreed follows Aaron Boone. He’s a troubled young man who believes he’s responsible for a series of murders. His psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Decker, encourages that suspicion while concealing a rather nasty secret of his own. Boone eventually discovers Midian. It’s an underground refuge inhabited by creatures known as the Nightbreed. These aren’t the sort of monsters who emerge from the darkness to chase unsuspecting teenagers through the woods. They’re a persecuted community that has spent generations hiding from humanity. Barker gives them an extraordinary variety of appearances, and that’s a big part of the movie’s appeal. There’s no attempt to make every creature look like a slightly uglier version of a regular person. Some are beautiful in an unsettling way, others are genuinely grotesque, and several look like Barker spent an afternoon imagining how many different ways a human body could go wrong. Doug Bradley appears as Peloquin, while the wonderfully bizarre Narcisse becomes one of the movie’s most memorable residents. Midian feels populated rather than simply decorated with monsters waiting for their next scene.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Barker wasn’t trying to create another collection of horror villains. He wanted audiences to understand why these creatures had built a refuge away from humanity. In his own description of the film, he imagined Midian as a place where monsters could find sanctuary from their cruelest enemy: mankind. That’s a pretty important distinction. The Nightbreed aren’t necessarily innocent, and some are every bit as dangerous as their appearances suggest. But they have families, relationships, and a community worth protecting. The movie essentially turns the traditional horror setup inside out. Instead of watching ordinary people stumble into a monster’s territory, we’re invited to see the world through the monsters’ eyes. Suddenly, the people carrying guns and torches become considerably more frightening than the things living beneath the cemetery.
There’s also something wonderfully ambitious about the way Barker approached Midian. He wasn’t interested in building a conventional fantasy kingdom with pretty castles and neatly organized magical creatures. The place feels ancient and uncomfortable, with strange architecture and inhabitants who seem to belong to an entirely different understanding of nature. Barker wanted a world that felt repulsive and fascinating at the same time. He even envisioned the movie as a kind of living painting inspired by the grotesque imagery of Hieronymus Bosch. That’s an appropriate comparison because Midian feels like somewhere you could spend hours examining the background and still discover another bizarre creature hiding in the shadows. The production created dozens of elaborate monster designs, giving the inhabitants distinct appearances rather than relying on a handful of familiar horror archetypes. Danny Elfman’s score also helps give the film its unusual atmosphere. There’s a genuine sense of wonder underneath all the grotesquery. It’s a strange combination, but that’s precisely what makes the movie work.
Unfortunately, the theatrical release didn’t entirely preserve Barker’s vision. The studio heavily edited the movie and pushed its marketing toward conventional horror. Barker wanted to make an elaborate fantasy about monsters and the people who persecute them. The studio struggled to sell that mixture of horror and fantasy, and the finished theatrical version lost important material. It took decades of fan campaigning before Barker’s
