Whatsisname and Thingummy vs. The Pet Shop vampires.

Rating: 5/10 (2 April 2008)

I had high hopes for this film after hearing the interesting synopsisvampires attack an Alaskan town as it is plunged into darkness for a whole monthbut feared the worst when I saw that its unimpressive cast included bland hunk Josh Whatsisname, Thingummy George from... um... that remake that wasn't particularly good, and some others (yes, the cast is that unmemorable). Just as I expected, 30 Days of Night turns out to be pretty dull, but is made just about watchable thanks to the occasional spot of decent gore.
The film starts off promisingly enough with a stranger to the remote town of Barrow destroying the inhabitants' mobile phones and killing their sled dogs. When he is caught by Sheriff Eben Oleson (Whatsisname) and thrown in jail, the man warns that 'they' are coming. So far so good.
Then it all goes wrong: 'they', as it turns out, are a gang of bloodthirsty vampiresand what an irritating bunch of crap bloodsuckers they prove to be! Head vampire Marlow (Danny Huston) is just laughable, looking like Neil Tennant (from the Pet Shop Boys) and speaking like a Klingon; the rest of the bloodsuckers look okay, but insist on hissing and screeching like demented velociraptors from Jurassic Park, and really grate on the nerves.
Director David Slade, whose last film was the impressive 'Hard Candy', manages a few decent moments of gory mayhem (an overhead shot of the vamps spilling blood into the snow; the big tractor-like machine with the big whirly blades, slicing and dicing through the vamps with ease; and the axe decapitation of Deputy Billy), but there are far too many dreary scenes featuring the survivors cowering in a variety of abandoned buildings.
Slade also succumbs to that annoying trend that has blighted many a recent movie: wobbly camera movements, with rapid editing. What action there is, is made extremely difficult to watch.
The very silly ending, in which Eben deliberately infects himself with vampire blood in order to defeat the enemy, is perhaps the worst part of the whole film, and left me wondering how such a daft finalé could have ever seemed like a good idea.
4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for the gore.