Watching today works best when you’re slightly drowsy, a bit hungover, a little stoned, or any combination of the three. When it premiered on January 18, 1996, it was a provocative, semi-ironic film, and three decades later, it resembles a bizarre fever dream. You could argue that From Dusk till Dawn is the most restrained B-movie ever made, delaying its supernatural, gory reveal for nearly an hour. If you went into From Dusk till Dawn completely blind, with zero context, you’d likely mistake it for a twisted buddy flick about two criminal siblings, Seth (George Clooney) and Richie (Quentin Tarantino), doing terrible things and taking hostages after a bank heist for motives that hardly add up.
The reality of From Dusk till Dawn is that—spoiler warning—it ultimately unveils itself as a film where an odd assortment of people fight vampires in a grimy strip club. Ironically, this particular plot twist is less compelling than the movie From Dusk till Dawn appears to be at the start. Mild spoilers follow.
From Dusk till Dawn opens with the Gecko brothers having committed a bank robbery in South Texas. At an isolated liquor store, a police officer talks with an employee, concerned about the imminent arrival of these fugitives. All hell breaks loose when Seth and Richie are revealed to be hiding in the freezer, holding two young women hostage who are desperate to escape. Those two women presumably do manage to flee, because after a shootout between the brothers and the employee, the whole place is torched and blows up. You may remember this particular moment from the 2009 MTV Movie Awards song by as this is the most not-looking at an explosion that is happening behind characters in a movie, ever.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and scripted by Tarantino (who delivers a solid acting performance), From Dusk till Dawn doesn’t rank among Rodriguez’s finest works. For devotees of the Desperado shared universe, there’s much to appreciate here, along with numerous Easter eggs if you’re inclined to watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico immediately after. The screenplay is pure vintage Tarantino, crammed with so many offensive lines that you can’t help but chuckle at the film’s fake edginess. Is this a movie satirizing this genre, or is it simply well-crafted trash? For those who enjoy debating such matters regarding Tarantino or Rodriguez films, From Dusk till Dawn sits at the heart of the schlock-as-art debate. If the offensive dialogue and relentless gore leave you with a headache or nausea, the sole redeeming quality of From Dusk till Dawn might be its sporadic dark humor.
After holding a family hostage in order to use their motorhome to get across the border, the Gekco brothers end up in a bordello, which is really a front for a ton of vampires. Enter Selma Hayek as Santanico, the sort-of queen of the secret vampires, who tries to lead her fellow erotic dancers to a feast of blood. From this point, a movie that felt like an odd crime thriller focused on the meaning of faith, family, and mortality, turns into a survival movie about murderous strippers versus a strange collection of humanity in which very few “good” people exist. Juliette Lewis as the innocent and abducted Kate is particularly good in this section of the movie, as is Clooney, whose fast-talking, cynical Seth betrays his hidden nature as maybe, just maybe, the murderer who could have been a hero in another life. (If you’ve just watched Jay Kelly, watching From Dusk till Dawn right afterwards will be a jarring experience.)
Ultimately, however, all the strongest writing and performances occur prior to reaching the bar, before the disclosure that it’s a vampire trap. This renders From Dusk till Dawn both brilliantly clever and deeply frustrating. Audiences flocked to this film expecting a gore fest, yet the superior portion—which comprises most of the running time—bears no connection to that element whatsoever.
In fact, even with the various offensive tropes and language in the film’s first half, the more character-driven writing and exploration of innocence and complicity are what render the movie watchable today. Or perhaps half-watchable is the more precise term. But which half you deem superior depends entirely on your taste in films; you’ll either find things start getting interesting upon arrival at the bar, or that’ll be the point when you’re ready to switch it off.