30 Days Of Night DVD Review

"30 Days Of Night" reviews

DVD

30 Days Of Night

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-03-28 17:50:16

Provider

DVD Review

Boasting a cracking premise - vampires attack a small Alaskan town that has no sunlight for 30 days - this is a superior chiller that is only let down by the misguided ending.

It's an assured set up though - and director David Slade, who impressed in his debut, Hard Candy, certainly doesn't miss a trick in wringing out the suspense as a small group of locals led by the Sheriff (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife (Melissa George) begin to suspect that something spooky is going on. They find the town's mobile phones all stolen and burnt - the electricity is cut off and a drifter (Ben Foster) warns them that danger is coming.

And when the vampires attack, it's a spectacularly gory affair as head vampire Marlow (a suitably creepy Danny Huston) and his army of undead begin their month's worth of feeding.

It's only when the film decides it want's to stop becoming just a cracking horror yarn and has aspirations to have the doomed resonance of, say, Titanic, that it falters with an ending that will have some laughing in disbelief.