Don't Give It the Cold Shoulder

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2008)

Okay, yes, this is a seemingly big-budgeted horror film(this distinction makes it greatly differ from another big-budgeted film)with loads of blood, guts, unsavory acts of violence toward women and children, and an incomprehensible script if one is looking for any dose of realism at all. Look but in vain for ye shall not find it. What we do know is that Barrow, Alaska, a town in the northernmost part of North America, has a period of one month where it is blanketed in total darkness - 30 days of darkness with no sunlight(just in case the concept was too complex I explained it at its most fundamental level here - kidding of course!). For some unexplained and not-so-inexplicable reason, a horde of foreign-sounding vampires descend on the town as soon as the first day of darkness ensues. What we get then is a period of non-stop hunting - vampires are the hunters and a rag-tag group of Alaskans who chose not to go somewhere else for this period become the prey. We get your usual suspects here. The town sheriff and the girl he broke up with thrust together under bad circumstances. Josh Hartnett and Melissa George play the couple with some conviction. But let's make no mistake, this is not a character driven piece by any standard. We get the crazed loner who rides a bulldozer and several other weird townsfolk we have seen prototypes of for years in film. The vampires look less than impressive and speak some alien language, and the film is decidedly grim with regard to violence and how it is shown. Though I would not recommend this film to the casual horror enthusiast for that specific reason, I did enjoy the film - flaws and all - for its fast-paced action and use of setting as a means of creating mood, theme, and plot in such a refreshing way. The story is wildly inconsistent and the acting mediocre at best, but director David Slade has just enough juice in other ways to make the film work for me in many ways. This is not a real good film nor is it a good film like more mainstream horror pictures you might see - but it is a reminder of the trend of horror today of being graphic, cold, dispassionate, and dehumanizing. It also shows how action and horror - like in Aliens for example - can be fused and work on some level.