The Time of Day

Rating: 8/10 (17 February 2008)

I'm the kind of person who takes the myth around vampires very lightly. To me vampires are somewhat ridiculous. To me vampires are boring brats like those in Interview with a vampire or plain silly like in the RPG The Masquerade; artsy wanna-bes and nerds with to much free time on their hands, all sexually deviant and not particularly scary, often portrayed a supermodels with light-blue eyes and bad make up.
Had it not been for my friend who highly recommended Thirty days of night, a friend who's equally unimpressed by the modern vampire-myth, I'd probably wouldn't give this the time of day and then a third vampire hater, stepped in a recommended it strongly.
For the first time I hated the vampires, so much I wanted them to die. The vampires in this movie aren't cool or exotic or sympathetic in that charming way, that seems to attract vampire-lovers.
You are going to love these vampires as much as you love Ralph Fiennes Kommandant Amon Göth in Schindler's List.
These vamps are, in every sense, nasty unlikable, disgusting, weird and utterly scary, just like a vampire should be.
So they come by boat to feed of the population of Barrow, an Alaskan small town, a place where no person ever seems to joke or smile. They're forced to live, once a year, in perpetual darkness during the winter.
The real interesting take on the vampires is that they have their own language and move like starved, rabid animals.
They don't seem to have a masterplan for world domination or being part of a conspiracy, they're just there and the way they look will scare most people. Their facial features is like something out of a David Lynchian nightmare.
I like that this is a mystery, not an action movie and the only other scary vampire movie in modern times is Shadow of the Vampire, a movie almost as scary.
But I can hear my vampire-loving friends bring this down, since the vamps didn't play spinette, spoke with eastern European accents and moaned like the best sex they've ever had every time they sink their teeth into jugulars.
They don't even seem to be enjoying themselves. There is one more movie that comes to mind and that The Addiction, where vampyrism also seem to be more of a decease like alcoholism or bulimia.
It does contain some pretty violent scenes like the massacre on the dogs, the gunplay and decapitations that look almost too realistic.
The entire movie for that matter has the same feel like 28 days later or Cloverfield.
I have never hated vampires more, but this time for a legit reason.
Some scenes fails to deliver but they are very few.