A tense, interesting take on the vampire genre

Rating: 6/10 (3 May 2008)

As many have pointed out, this is not a perfect film. Overall I liked it quite a bit, but I'll start with the major plot flaw that bothered me throughout. The vampires initially seem intent on ransacking the town and killing everyone in sight as fast as possible. However, after they've taken out 95% of the town, they just kind of hang around for another 20 days. There's not much left to do or to feed on; it made no sense. They don't seem to be actively hunting for the final survivors. In fact, they don't seem to be doing much at all. A brief speech from the head vampire indicates they want to destroy any possible witnesses to what has happened, but they aren't all that motivated to find the last group of survivors hiding in the attic. It's not a very big town. I would think it would take the vampires only a few hours to search the entire thing thoroughly.
If you get by the major plot problem, the film is actually a pretty tense affair. It feels part horror movie, part survivor story. The vampires are portrayed in a gritty, realistic fashion. There's no romantic vision of the vampire here. The vampires are little more than a wolf pack of predators. While they have super-human strength and quickness, they don't seem to be extraordinarily intelligent. If anything, they are more like animals. The setting in Alaska is original and helps the feeling of desperation. There truly is no escape from these creatures in the snowy isolation. It reminded me of the claustrophobic feel of Alien, where the central characters are picked off one-by-one with nowhere to run.
The main characters are developed just enough that we have something to care about, but for the most part their personal stories are pushed to the background as they are in a desperate fight for their lives. I also enjoyed the lack of background on the vampires. Leaving their history unknown was a nice touch. The mysterious and unexplained is always more frightening.
As for the ending, I will agree with others who have said it was cheesy. It was one of the few bad moments in an otherwise well done, realistic/gritty movie. It didn't ruin it for me, but I would have hoped for something more dark and cynical. The action-movie style "showdown" fistfight didn't really work. Overall though, it was surprisingly good with very few poorly done moments that pulled the viewer out of the story. I would definitely recommend this to horror movie fans in the mood for a tense, gruesome vampire flick.