Last night was Halloween, so I thought it was rather appropriate to go see the ‘scary’ vampire flick, 30 Days Of Night, featuring rabid vampires laying waste to the Alaskan town of Borrow during a full month where no sun shall be seen. With the great set up and the potential to be a really good horror movie, it fell flat on it’s face. I wonder if the graphic novels are any better?

STOP READING NOW – SPOILERS AHEAD!

What I liked:

• The graphics for the posters and advertisements hyping the film were hot, hot, hot!
• The music punctuating the film is spot on.
• Ben Foster plays scary and disturbed very well.
• The feel and filming lends itself really well to the atmosphere and tone of the film.
• The building suspense and sheer frightful ruthlessness of the vampires taking out the town with reckless abandon.
• The vampire make-up, the pack-like behavior and the wolf-like feeding really made for some stomache turning moments.
• The premise of the movie is a great one – 30 days of night and surviving.
• The vampire toddler. Ew.
• The gore had me wincing.
• The ending wasn’t a happy ending.

What I didn’t like:

• The town is entirely crippled by some human henchman (Ben Foster) who takes out all communication, steals all the mobile phones, the sled dogs, and other means of communication? Not bloody likely.
• In the whole town, there is one axe, a couple of guns, and the only creative guy is the guy with the ice/snow cutter plow taking out the vamps with reckless abandon.
• The lack of creativity of the survivors to come up with something to fend them off for 30 days is just a bit pathetic. Again, where are the chainsaws? flamethrowers? flare guns?
• Stella rushes out to save a child walking the streets. With everything that has happened to tell her not to do anything rash and not have that pesky survival instinct kick in, she rushes out to save the child and hide under an abandoned truck. Lame.
• The lead vampire spouting falsely deep observations and then going back to hunting.
• The last day of night, Stella under a truck with a child and the vampires breaking an oil pipeline setting the town on fire, and the lead decides the only way to stop the vampire horde once and for all is to become a vampire himself? You had one more day, dude! You were in a metal building. You probably could have held them off and escaped to tell others. For me this was Deux ex machina and a bit too much for me to stomache.
• The characters were totally portrayed as unlikeable cardboard cut-out idiots and I wanted them all to die. I think I would have rather had my throat ripped out than to hang out with this pathetic bunch of losers trying to make it to the end of the month.

It could have been rather compelling but with all the glaring plot holes, I left the theater with a confused, semi-satisfied and disappointed feeling, and not very happy about it. Do yourself a favor, stay home at night and rent something scary.