About time

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2008)

First thing I have to say is this, to those people who hurl insults and accusations at the cast and crew of this film. Give them a break, first off, it is a vampire film, to all those hoping to see Shakespeare when you sat in the theater deserve to be disappointed. Second of all, saying that the Director should be fired or that they should get a REAL Director to do the film is down right uncalled for, clearly those people have no idea what it takes to make a film, how hard it is and not just that, they have to make it on a budget and within a time frame, and perhaps there were places they could have done better, or things they could have done differently but so what? To throw these insults at those involved with making this film I assume that the insulters have never made a bad working decision in their life, nor have they ever performed under 100% of their capability and have always done their work with 100% dedication and passion, because if they don't meet those assumptions then I guess they deserve to be fired too and replaced by a real employee.
Now rant over, on to the film.
At times the logic falls through, and there is no real sense of time passing, and the on screen notification of time passing is jumpy and the film feels like it takes place all in one night. At times the characters appear wooden, though I feel this is out of style than out of poor acting/writing. So, it is starting to sound like a regular horror film at this point, however it is the monsters of this film that set it apart from the run of the mill horror trash, as well as the cinematography.
First off, the camera work was great, some really good shots show they took this film seriously and that does wonders for films in this genre, not all shaky low budget cam like Bloodrayne 2, and not boringly static like Underworld, the action too is shown more fully on screen as opposed to the standard shot tight cut fast, while there is some of it, for the most part you can see what is happening on screen just like they used to shoot movies.
The vampires are most impressive, recently Vampires have been portrayed as sexy, romantic, cool, etc. Thanks to Anne Rice, And the World of Darkness games and a slew of crappy games and films they are now a pop icon, people think it is cool to be them etc. What really stands out about these vampires is that they have at long last, been portrayed as the monsters they are. They are not romantic or sexy, they do not feel human emotion or even think the way we think, they are demonic monsters, not emo humans with fangs and super powers. However usually when a monster is portrayed as a monster they are also verging on the braindead (I am Legend) because people have this stupid idea that monsters are people too...rubbish, but in 30 days of night, they are not braindead, not merely animals, they are sentient beings, albeit alien from ourselves, who consciously and willingly do evil, that is what truly makes them monsters and that is why this is a truly good film for the horror genre and it would be good to sit all these emo kids down and show them this film, that the monsters they think are cool are not romantic sex symbols but actually demonic(take that word as you will) human hating monsters, not human disliking, but hating, there is no greater pleasure for them than killing us, truly monstrous.