WITH zombie movies taking dominance this year with sequels to Resident Evil and 28 Days Later filling cinema screens, it is the vampire's
turn to revel in the spotlight with the Sam Raimi produced 30 Days Of Night.
Set in an isolated Alaskan town, the community are busy preparing for their annual month of darkness.
But while most of the townsfolk are leaving for the month, a group of ancient, bloodthirsty vampires are moving in.
As the town is slowly decimated, a small band of survivors led by the local sheriff (Josh Hartnett) try to last until sunrise.
Director David Slade made his controversial debut with the highly stylised Hard Candy – talking the subject of paedophilia with a dash
of vengeance and dollops of cringe worthy drama.
So to follow on from this critical success with a horror had many people excited.
And in some ways 30 Days doesn't disappoint.
Slade's crisp filming style nestles nicely amidst the freezing setting of Alaska; keeping the visual style sharp and, when action and gore
are brought into the equation, deeply visceral.
But despite great turns by Hartnett and Melissa George as they try to evade the undead, the stereotypical baggage that goes along with fang-fiction remains irritatingly intact.
Yes they have been made slightly more modern, shying away from Christopher Lee in a cape and embracing a marriage of skewed reality
and hyper-style. But their evolution is not enough to really distance them from every other vampire cliché around.
The execution of time lapsed is also flawed with the characters never seeming to feel the effects of prolonged fear or exposure to the elements.
30 Days Of Night includes many components of a good horror film; but while it strives to combine the feeling of isolation and paranoia of
films like The Thing with the modern edge of 28 Weeks Later, it fails to quite reach either.
6/10 – It may lack any real bite, but it doesn't completely suck! The full article contains 335 words and appears in North Wales Pioneer newspaper.
