Pretty Good Vampire Flick

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2008)

"30 Days of Night" are coming to a small Alaskan town, and a group of vampires decide it's the perfect spot for a feast. But a ragtag group of townsfolk decide to fight back.
Well, mostly anyway. "30 Days of Night" has a lot going for it. Mainly, I liked that the vampires weren't suave or brooding or angsty teens. It's nice to have vampires as monsters, the way they should be: they hate, they eat, they destroy, they move on. Plus, there was some decent gore, and even though it looked very CGI and pretty, it worked within the confines of its comic book source. Performances were good all around, and I can't believe little Ben Foster who I used to watch on the Disney channel is so good at being crazy and dirty.
A few things didn't work for me. One, the attempts at emotional depth. I really never cared enough about the characters to really worry about their plight. Ordinarily, this isn't a problem in horror films, but there were several clumsy attempts to tug at the heartstrings and those just made the film grind to a halt for me. I also had a problem with the vampires going hog wild on the town at the beginning. You have 30 days, gang. Chill for a bit and enjoy the scenery or ski or something. What's the purpose of trying to do in the whole food supply at the very beginning and then having 28 more days to hang around? Still, I liked it more than I thought I would and it was a pretty good time. Also a nice antidote to moody vampires and teen horror.