Very spooky, entertaining horror movie

Rating: 7/10 (31 March 2008)

I love horror, I don't like gore. This movie had plenty of both, and the fact I rated it this highly is a tribute to the all around excellence of the acting, the production values, and the unique location in Barrow, Alaska.
Unfortunately there are also a number of flaws which keep this one well down from a top rating. Fortunately, most of them are stuffed into the last quarter of the film.
Good - We didn't get a lot of vampire mythology. They weren't glorified or turned into hip objects of admiration. All that made them far more believable as a force of heartless evil. It would be so easy to go over the top in portraying the evil but this film does a great job of not throwing a lot of unnecessary emo into the vamps. Excellent job.
The setting is superb. Cinematography first rate. Crane scene breathtaking. It seems a bit warm most of the time for the season but that's quibbling.
The 'heroes/heroines' are played well and most importantly not overplayed. This is not a movie where one guy stands there blazing away with automatic weapons in both hands while dozens of bad guys fall dead. It's quite believable in terms of the outcomes of fights, up until the end. The "conversion" of the children was especially eerie.
Bad - Some of the survival decisions made by the dwindling group of humans seem rather... bone headed. It's not clear why they could not have weaponed up a bit more. It wouldn't have taken much to have the rugged mountain man saw the barrel of his shotgun down, for example. If "UV lamps" worked like magic phasers, why wouldn't they have taken some back to the power station? There seemed to be no plan at all for interior defense. Surely the middle aged woman had the guts to wield a weapon, but I don't recall her having a gun. etc etc.
Awful - Good grief, the last ten minutes just about flushed the whole movie down the commode. They are a couple hours away from daylight and the Sheriff does what??? Then he goes off and fights the leader of the vamps while they all stand around and watch??? And his wife, instead of running like she's supposed to just walks up to them??? huh? The ridiculous melodrama with the sunrise just caps off a sequence of pure schlock.
If the whole movie had been like the last ten minutes this would indeed have deserved a 1. It's too bad they couldn't have found a better way to end it other than this near comical series of ruinously improbable events.