And Soon The Darkness

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2008)

This film has a similar central idea to "Pitch Black." Both movies deal with monsters that can only come out at night being suddenly given an extra opportunity to attack as often as they wish due to the disappearance of the sun (in "Pitch Black" it was because of an eclipse, in "30 Days of Night" it's due to Barrow's extreme northerly position in the winter). It also has a remote Alaskan setting like "Insomnia," but that film dealt with the 24-hour daylight Alaska has in the summertime.
Josh Hartnett plays the Sheriff of a small Alaskan town that, for one month every year, goes into complete darkness. This coincides with the arrival in the town of a pack of blood-thirsty vampires (from Russia perhaps? Alaska isn't too far away from Russia and the vampires do have an odd, clicking, Eastern-European-sounding dialect).
Hartnett arrests a man in a diner for demanding raw meat with menaces. He brings him to the jail in the Sheriff's station where the prisoner's demented ramblings seem to be portents of impending doom (He is a lot like the Renfield character in "Dracula," with his mad ravings, unusual eating habits and his apparent connection with the vampires).
The film seems to be heavily influenced by the work of John Carpenter, particularly "Assault on Precinct 13", "The Fog" and especially "The Thing." There is also a nod to "Salem's Lot" when a vampire crashes in through a kitchen window at astonishing speed and then slowly rises to his feet. After that, the film becomes a sort of horror version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" with the survivors of the vampire extermination holed up in an attic and jumping at every noise outside.
Melissa George is the heroine and she looks gorgeous as always. She's rapidly becoming a scream queen for the YouTube generation with her appearances in "The Amityville Horror" remake, "Paradise Lost" and now "30 Days of Night." Josh Hartnett makes a welcome return to the genre he started out in with "Halloween H20" and "The Faculty." For some reason, he only seems to make an effort in horror or sci-fi flicks. In movies like "The Black Dahlia" and "Hollywood Homicide" he was sleepwalking and didn't seem interested at all. Here he does seem committed to the part and it's good to see him giving his all again.
The vampires are a little anonymous. We don't know anything about any of them. Where do they come from? What language are they speaking? How old are they? Nothing. They are just a bunch of bloodsuckers and that's it (John Carpenter always says he prefers to have characters with no back-story in his films, so there's another Carpenter touch for you).
We do learn in this film that you can kill vampires with an axe (that's a new one on me!) There are no stakes, garlic, crucifixes or holy water in this movie!
The ending stretches credibility and doesn't really satisfy, but up until then, this is a good, solid vampire movie. Be warned though, it's very gory and if you're at all squeamish, steer clear.