by Phillip Ellis

Created on: April 08, 2008

The Lost Boys aint lost anymore..

30 Days of Night is a great description for this film as there are few bright moments. I think it's fair to say that this used one of the oldest tricks in the book to get momentum and so lots of people went to see it-a cool trailer. The DVD dust-cover proclaimed it to be the 'best horror film in a decade' and with Sam 'Spiderman' Raimi producing it could well have been true. Not being a huge fan of the genre when I saw the said clip I thought it did look ok and a maybe. Considering how disappointing the horror genre is these days with all these woeful American remakes of the Asian Extreme classics there has to be something decent out there. Unless it's a spooky/violent Japanese jobby I don't touch them with a barge pole in Blockbusters. I haven't seen anything decent since Dog Soldiers, which this certainly isn't.

There was a very good sign early on that this may indeed be quite cute, a symbolic pile of burnt out cell-phones in the snow and ice a sign the director did have a sense of humour.We all know mobiles phones wreck horror films, no signal or flat batteries ect, so that particular scene bought a rye smile to my lips.

You know you have rented a vampire film so no qualms there. But when the bloodsuckers turn up looking like the Lost Boys all grown up wearing knee-length Paul Smith evening coats made from the best Afghan silk in minus forty degrees, you do wonder if the film is going to be as quite as cool as the weather after all. Slick and trendy vampires are nothing new in film, but it's the first of many tired clichs you are hit with early on here, as welcome as the icy Alaskan winds roaring through the cut off mining town that accommodates the films plot.

Josh Hartnett, of course, who survived 40 days and 40 nights of no sex, is a walking clich here trying to survive 30 days of vampires, playing the valiant sheriff who has to defend his town from the unknown foe, straight from a Stephen King novel. To be fair he's not as annoying as he normally is on screen and his performance here is only saved by the inept script, which he blends into like a Chameleon. If you don't notice his grandstanding on the screen then he is bearable.

-The plot-

Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) gently bosses a small Alaskan oil town with his team of deputies. At the heart of the bitter North American winter there's no such thing as man made global warming this far north, for one long month it's totally dark and very very cold as the sun sets for 30

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