Some good, some bad, and some ugly...

Rating: 6/10 (7 March 2008)

***SPOILERS MAY OCCUR HERE***
If you like horror, vampires, and/or believable imagery, see this movie. If you want rich character development and intellectual stimulation, move along.
I thought this was a very refreshing take on the vampire, although it could have been SO much better!!!! I have to start off by complaining about the editing, which was bad, BAD, especially in the beginning before the nice juicy gore came to distract me from this first of several shortcomings. The beginning just came off as an unrelated sequence of events...Ship arriving...sheriff finding mysteriously burned phones...murdered dogs...two almost distractingly attractive people dealing with an unexplained breakup...blah blah blah. Enter creepy guy, who was very well played...and then we have a vampire invasion! I did like the concept of 30 days of pitch black nighttime conditions, even if not entirely true. Okay, I can deal with that. Annoyingly, time in this movie proceeds unmarked except for the flaky "day markers." Another annoyance was that several of the human characters had absolutely ZERO survival instincts, such as shutting your mouth when vampires may be nearby. I was also distracted and very disappointed by the "Men say, women do." The women in this film were generally quite helpless, apparently, and would all be vampire fodder if not for the brave, heroic, self-sacrificing deeds of one handsome man. I wistfully yearned for (Circa 2003?) Dawn of the Dead, in which of course one of the strongest characters is a woman. And as soon as Harnett's character "magically" made himself a vampire, the ending became totally predictable: Against all odds and with no experience killing or hunting as a vampire himself, this dashing hero is going to challenge and defeat what is probably the most powerful and experienced bloodsucker in the bunch to save the day and then die. Yep, I was right. Onto something I'm undecided on: I don't know if I liked the vampires being so...obvious. Even the original Dracula himself could pass for a human. Not by much, as I recall, but he could. However, the vampires were visually terrifying. These Barrow vampires were sadistic and calculating, a pleasant aspect not seen in most good horror movies where some mindless ghoul chases the quick-thinking humans. And there is a stark lack of finesse in their feeding. Of course, the savagery of the way they ate was pleasantly disturbing/scary/wicked, but it didn't match their intelligence, forethought, and ability to manipulate. Their language did served well to hint at their character, however. I also found the lighting and general imagery very believable, not done to death with CGs. The end fight scene, I thought, was beautifully shot; the ring of vampires surrounded by fire was breathtaking. So that's it; maybe my 6/10 could be a 7; hope my ramblings helped someone in some universally meaningless way...