Good Idea, I Suppose, But Fails Miserably

Rating: 3/10 (17 November 2008)

I accept the idea that 30 days of night would be heaven on earth for a vampire, that being said, it doesn't happen that way in any part of the world, it's not scientifically possible. However, even if I chose to ignore that major detail (which, quite honestly, I did for the sake of enjoying the film) there were just too many problems with this movie for it to actually be anything more than barely watchable.
First of all, the violence got choppy (and I mean really really choppy), so much so that I could barely tell what was going on when it probably would've been really cool to see. It's almost as if they couldn't hold their camera man was ADD or the camera was too heavy for him or something. It simply got really annoying really quickly.
Second, I absolutely hate it when characters know way more than they should. For instance (and this isn't a spoiler because it's true with all vampire myths, except when you talk about that piece of trash book Twilight, but that's not important) how the hell do they know that the vampires don't like sunlight? They "explain" their reasoning, but it's such a stretch that within two seconds I came up with a million other, more plausible reasons for their "explanation" besides that they don't like the sun. I know that they could have come up with a better way of telling us that.
Third I'll compile my issues with the vampires themselves (since there are only two) when the vampires attack someone it's like their having a freaking seizure. They keep flailing their heads around, it actually looks really funny and I had to keep from laughing, which is not good when your supposed to be scared by them. My other issue with the vamps, one minute they seem like intelligent hunters, the next they seem like mindless killing machines, back to intelligent hunters, mindless... intelligent... mindless... they switch back n' forth so much I could never quite wrap my head around what I supposed to think about them! Fourth and finally (without going into spoilers that is) I watched this movie expecting a frightening horror movie... it wasn't scary, and it can only be classified as horror for a few short seconds (and anything with vampires has to be horror). For the most part, it was a slow romp through the snow here, and some gory action there... I would classify it more as drama or action than horror.
However, the look and feel of the film was good, I liked the art style a lot, so I was really hoping it was going to be good, and the story was not all that bad, enough plot holes to bug me, but I expect a few here and there... but it wasn't good, and it takes a lot more than an amazing art style and over the top gore to impress me (a matter of fact, over the top gore bugs me, I like realistic gore, that's always fun, but too much just gets way to in your face and distracts from the film itself).