Such promise yet such a letdown

Rating: 5/10 (26 October 2007)

Now don't get me wrong, I love me some vampire movies and gore and blood and gratuitous violence just like the next movie freak but after the first hour of this particular one I had to keep myself from walking out of the theater.
Great setting, Hartnett does a very very good job as the sheriff and I loved the grittiness and reality of the town which they lived in. Great set up with how the action starts but then for me it quickly dwindled into a very very average flick. I'm tired, so very tired of seeing cliché after cliché in regards to monster movies. Are vampires intelligent? Do they dress nice? Do they speak their own language? Who really knows but if done well, a vampire movie can retain old feel as well as inject new as well. Having mindless drones run around screeching at the camera at every chance with that continuous open mouth, show me the fangs stare, does get tiresome quickly. Break the mold such as was done with zombies in 28 days later. Now of course they weren't dead in 28 days so how could they really be zombies but it was implied and the fact that they were the way they were due to a contagion did little to lessen the effect of the movie.
This movie dragged longer than it should have and left too many holes and unanswered questions. Great build up with just as much of a letdown in the overall story. The ending didn't satisfy me as a viewer who wanted to see a very climactic finish. Very average which is a shame because it really did have a lot going for it at the start.