The MovieAn isolated Alaskan town is plunged into darkness for a month
each year, when the sun sinks below the horizon. As the last rays of light fade,
the town is attacked by a gang of vampires bent on an orgy of destruction. Only
the small town's Sheriff and a handful of townsfolk can save the town ... and
maybe the world. ReviewThe concept is just brilliant. you picture
the pitch "Well, you see, Alaska goes for thirty days with no sunlight. That's
one hell of a night for the vampires to attack"; and the response "You'd
have to like, steal all their mobile phones and burn them, and cut the phone lines.
And kill all the sled dogs. And the power" "Great, so the scene
is set ... then what?" That's about it, really, so far as plot goes.
The sheriff has a sad relationship, and it takes thirty-odd days for him to work
out why. The tragedy is that it's a two-hour real-time gore fest; there's no attempt
to justify those thirty days. It's quite noisy, and the gore is pretty good. But
even that is spoiled. We are shown an industrial strength garbage grinder at minute
5; the whole audience knows that towards the end, a vampire will disappear though
those thrashing blades. There's the local loner, who gets a ticket from the sheriff
for an oil leak (woo!); we know that they'll later depend on each other for survival.
The sheriff's ex tries to leave town before the airport closes (no night flights,
it would seem), and fails. So they'll have to have a serious discussion, right?
Apparently not, unless it happened between day 11 and day 18, when they were stuck
together at the hip, and we were excluded. This is a gore fest with a few
sentances tagged on for old times sake; it's one of the best gore fests I've seen
for years, but that's not enough. The vampires were well designed, and clearly
have a story of their own ... but it never gets hinted at. And some of the
script is just so bad: Lead Vampire ~ "Things that are broken need to be
broken" The vampire leader has total control; "don't turn them",
he says, "kill them all"; so every time the plot sags, we get a human
victim turning out to be a killer. At least Sean
of the Dead made a joke of that. What a waste, what a tragic waste of
the best vampire idea in years. The DVD
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