Vampire films have been thin on the ground recently; ever since the demise of Buffy it seems that no one else wanted to make a blood-thirsty film.

30 Days of Night is set in a small town in Alaska within the artic circle. Being in the artic circle they have a month of darkness (as you may have guessed from the film title)! More than half of the town dwellers leave before the final sunset as they cannot cope without the sun. The town is 80 miles from anywhere else, with no roads and all communications have been cut off, the electricity is also cut off, so there is no escape. During these 30 sun free days, vampires decided to ransack the entire town to catch and kill all survivors.

This film does not keep its pace; it leaps from fast paced action to incredibly slow hiding scenes. The scenes in which the small group of survivors hide, at first seem very uncomfortable, but after a while you notice why. The group hide in attic trying not to make a sound, there is no soundtrack over these quieter scenes. Nobody in the audience dares to make a sound at all. You do really feel if you make a sound the vampires will catch the remaining town folk.

The colour pallet from this film is more noticeable than a lot of other films. As the red on white, blood on snow contrast is fantastic! The special effects also look great there are plenty of explosions, chase scenes and people being ripped apart.

This is one of the best horror films I have seen in a far while as you really do want the characters to survive, and every time there’s a dispute between the characters you silently beg them not to shout or slam a door, as there location will be obvious to the vampires.

I don’t know how accurate this is to the original graphic novel, but it does seem to be a well rounded story. There have been a lot of horror films put out during the past few months, but this is the most exciting and interesting so far.

by David Price