30 Days of Night

Title: 30 Days of Night
Director: David Slade
Year Released: 2007
Rating: R

This movie sucked, plain and simple. And no, that wasn’t an intentional pun.

I usually write a synopsis but frankly I think it would be a waste of space for this movie. This is the basic plot: Vampires attack Alaskan town that lives in darkness 30 days out of the year. People scream. Vampires scream. Everyone dies. Especially those in the audience.

The Characters: The best horror movies have characters that you can connect with; this movie ain’t one of them. Josh Hartnett plays the main character (which, really, tells you all you need to know). There’s also his estranged wife, handy with a gun. The rest of the townspeople are personality-free, walking meat waiting to be slaughtered in a gush of CGI-blood. And of course the obligatory Renfield-type character who tried to act weird and threatening but just ended up annoying the fuck out of me. Jeez, if the vampires are recruiting people like him to serve their cause it’s no wonder why they’re such a rare breed.

The vampires are actually pretty cool, primitive and bestial, but with their own rudimentary society. A nice change from the godawful Anne Rice prettyfaces that have infected vampire movies for decades now. And kudos to giving Danny Huston the role of alpha vampire. He looks slightly like a Wal-Mart cashier dragging himself out of a particularly heavy binge, but that’s better than your usual alluring, gorgeous head vampire with the rock-hard abs, right? Right?

The Dialogue: Mediocre. Nothing howlingly bad, but nothing good either. Bear in mind that 75% of the dialogue consisted of screams.

The Setting: The Alaskan lands looked beautiful until the sun went down and you were left staring at people with snow crusted on their greasy beards. There was a nice sense of isolation in some of the beginning scenes, but that also faded once the sun went down.

The Verdict: C-. The look of the vampires saved this from getting a D. It’s not bad enough to be campy or MST-worthy, so there’s really no point watching it unless you want to see a different kind of vampire.