mosquitodragon’s review published on Letterboxd:
Boring as batshit.
Nightwing comes from that period when Hollywood studios were striving for a different sort of "elevated" horror. Only in those days, that didn't equate to stylistically aping The Shining (the more elevated horror I see these days, the more convinced I am that all of them are basically just doing that). It meant shoehorning about an hour of really uninteresting "drama" between characters. And because, in the case of Nightwing, it's not particularly well written, all you end up with is something similar to a daytime television serial.
Nick Mancuso looks very handsome dressed up as a Native American reservation cop, but that doesn't really excuse it. It's not so much the political incorrectness as the fact it just looks dumb. Kathryn Harrold looks a lot like Margot Robbie. Margot came later so she must be the one imitating. Unoriginal.
We do get a couple of bat attack scenes. They're fun but, as in pretty much every horror movie ever made that involves bats, the animals just look ridiculous. It's excusable in a Hammer horror movie where Dracula is the real threat, but this movie is so deadly serious in its intent to frighten you with bats, it all becomes a bit pathetic.
MVP is David Warner because, well, obviously it's going to be David Warner. But he is the Quint-analogue here - minus the sense of humour. A man so consumed by his hatred for the vampire bat he has dedicated his life to eradicating them. At one point he gives a long, impassioned monologue about how evil they are and it's absolutely hilarious. His delivery is impeccable but that just accentuates the hilarity - because when you think about it, this movie is trying to make us terrified of harmless little flying mice, which is basically what bats are (I don't know, I'm not a goddamned zoologist, but I think that's about right).
The film ends with a graphic text advising us that a colony of vampire bats was recently found in the southwestern USA or something - as if to suggest that Nightwing is a visionary social warning. This movie is entirely earnest in suggesting the incursion of vampire bats would lead to the end of the world and life as we know it. I'd get on board with such insanity if it was inept enough to laugh at, but it's just long and boring and dumb.
