Did nobody have any garlic?

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2019)

Barrow is an Alaskan town that is plunged into darkness for 30 days every 12 months. Whilst the townspeople are prepared for this what they hadn't banked on was a group of blood thirsty vampires who start to take the residents out one by one...
30 Days Of Night is simplistic and old-fashioned in terms of its approach; vampires arrive and start killing people one by one leaving a trail of bodies and pools of blood in their wake. What this all leads to its a fairly pacey film with plenty of unpretentious thrills and spills. Director David Slade does a really good job here; the vampires are seemingly unstoppable and this creates a sense of peril for the remaining survivors as they try to figure out how to overthrow their much stronger and faster adversaries.
Although it provides plenty of gore and old-school thrills there are a few problems with the film; for a start, there's no real backstory with the vampires; who are they? Where did they come from? At one point the leader of the vampires mentions they've been waiting for centuries for this, but why and where had they been? Another weak link lay with the characters; Hartnett is not the best of actors and doesn't do a great job in crafting out much of a character here (although I did warm more towards him as the film progressed). The other characters also failed to add much to the film making barely memorable contributions.
Still if you're just looking for some old-fashioned gore, thrills and 100 minutes of escapism then, despite some of my reservations, you should find plenty to enjoy about 30 Days Of Night.