Such a promising premise, such a stupid movie

Rating: 2/10 (3 September 2013)

I have been wanting to see this movie for a long time because the premise was so interesting. I was hoping for something like the terrifying claustrophobia and geographic trap that made John Carpenter's The Thing so scary. But, uh, no. Not at all!
I started to realize that this was going to be a bad film after about 60 seconds, when the two cops trudge across a vast wasteland of snow to examine . . . a little black spot in the snow--a pile of burnt cell phones. How did they know this little pile of burnt phones was out there in the vastness? Oh don't even ask, because it is only the first of dozens of just irritatingly stupid logical flaws that plague this movie!
The brain-numbing logical flaws just never end! Where did these "vampires" come from before the sun went down for a month? Where do they go the other 11 months of the year? (some snow cave, perhaps? an igloo?) And then to learn that they have been around for centuries makes it even more baffling. Who in the hell have they been eating all that time? Inuit people? Where did the head vampire get that nice modern suit he's wearing? Perhaps he stole it from someone on the Shackleford expedition? And why is the suit and his white collared shirt so spotless at the start of the film, especially since these "vampires" have such horrid hygiene--none of them ever seem to wipe their mouths, so that each of them walks around for the whole movie with what looks like beard of red blood all over the lower half of their face. Which is funny because none of the "vampires" are ever shown actually EATING the people they kill. They may growl and rip open someone's neck, but they never seem particularly interested in, you know, actually drinking blood. You'd think they'd have more of an appetite after hibernating (or whatever they do) for the last 11 months. In fact, I watched the whole movie without ever understanding what the "vampires" actually WANTED. If it was actually just food, that would have been so much better; if they crept in like predators and dragged humans off into the darkness to devour them, that would have been scary. But they don't. They just seem to stumble around and hiss without even really eating anybody.
Even the setting is a disappointment, because you never get any sense of emptiness or isolation; the set looks more like a small town in an old western movie (shot on a studio back lot). And speaking of darkness . . . well it isn't. There is always so much light on everyone at every moment in the movie it makes you wonder who strung up all the Klieg lights all over town and what keeps them running even after the "vampires" disable the power plant.
The editing is also a disaster. Every "scary" moment is cut to pieces to attempt to make it look exciting or shocking, but it does not help. It just makes you think constantly about the editing, and the fact that you are watching a movie, and a bad one at that. Even the sound design is hilariously bad; there are sounds of a screaming, whistling wind over shots where there are just a few lazy snowflakes slowly falling.
Perhaps most maddening is the syrupy and heavy handed love story with the two impossibly- pretty-for-Alaska lead characters, Eben and Stella (neither of whom you can ever imagine living in such a place as Barrow). You know this story is going to be nauseating and overly obvious when one of the minor characters says to the pretty blond Stella, "Me and Jennie were hoping you and Eben would rethink this whole separation thing." And this (SPOILER ALERT!) is actually the only bit of suspense in this silly movie: are Stella and Eben going to reconcile??? Yep, every sappy emotion is spelled out for the slow people (and teenagers, the obvious target audience for this film) in the theater--except for any hint about the reason they separated. They are both so perfectly pretty and virtuous with no character flaws or skin blemishes, you can't imagine why they weren't happy together.
Finally, the climax of the movie is so disastrously illogical on top of all the other nonsensical things that come before it (SPOILER ALERT! Even though the main characters repeatedly run out into the street to save each other and never get caught by the superhumanly fast vampires, at the end, the only way Eben can save Stella is to BECOME one of the vampires so he can have a man-to- man fistfight with the lead vampire while all the others form a circle and watch from a respectful distance like some bad John Wayne movie. Oh god. It's all so senseless.
I joined IMDb so I could write this review and others like it because I want to try to steer people away from movies like this. Don't encourage them with your money, people!!! There are so many better more worthy movies you could be spending your money on! If you want to be scared, check out The Thing, or REC, two of the scariest, most claustrophobic movies I've ever seen.
Thanks for reading!