Good concept, mediocre execution

Rating: 6/10 (24 August 2008)

Vampire flick with a great concept: vampires invade Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, during the one month a year in which there is no sunshine. Josh Hartnett plays the town sheriff, Melissa George his ex-wife (I think) and Danny Huston the leader of the vampires. These vampires are the kind of modern movie monsters that aren't so suave as your classic vampire, but rabid, brutal, slobbering monsters. As such, director Slade applies 28 Days Later-like shaky-cam during the action sequences. That worked fairly well in 28 Days Later and its sequel, but is kind of annoying here. The film is actually pretty good at building a terrifying mood, and, despite the shaky-cam, the monsters are pretty scary. The heroes, on the other hand, are rather boring. The plot is basically your cast attrition model where a group of stereotypes gets picked off one-by-one. The film is condensed from a graphic novel, and I'd bet the source material is better. There are quite a few moments that felt underexplained, and though the film is supposed to cover a whole month, several days are skipped at a time and most of the action seems to take place in just a couple of days. I would still have probably given the movie a slight recommendation, but I thought the climax was rather silly.