land of the midnight scum

Rating: 5/10 (6 April 2008)

OK, so the northernmost city in the United States goes through a month of darkness with vampires - whose origin never gets identified - roaming the streets looking for blood. If the people in Barrow saw "30 Days of Night", they probably spent half the time identifying inaccuracies (namely how the sun set straight down, when in reality Barrow's location above the 70th parallel means that the sun rises and sets at about a 20 degree angle).
The characters are what I have come to expect in these sorts of movies. There's the hero (Josh Hartnett), his tough-but-delicate blonde hubby (Melissa George), and most everyone else exists to blurt out comments and eventually get slaughtered. I understand that the vampires' origins might not add to the story, but I would have liked to know whence they came; if the movie's gonna go so far as to give them their own language, at least explain their history.
So, if you just like to see gore, then this is definitely the movie for you. But the vampire movies that I recommend are "Nosferatu" (both the original and the remake), the 1931 "Dracula" (how can you not admire Bela Lugosi?), the 1958 "Dracula" (they started showing gore), "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" (directed by Mel Brooks and starring Leslie Nielsen; enough said), John Carpenter's "Vampires", and the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Transylvania 6-5000" (the last short in which Chuck Jones directed Bugs Bunny).
Also starring Danny Huston (John's son) and Ben Foster (Claire's friend on "Six Feet Under").