Dir. David Slade, New Zealand/US, 2007, 113 mins
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston Review by Carol Allen
We're all familiar with the horror film formula of a group of people trapped in some isolated environment being picked off one by one by 'Them', be they zombies, Freddie Krueger, crocodiles or in this case vampires. The setting here is the isolated town of Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost inhabited area of America, which for thirty days every winter is plunged into continuous night. And when a voraciously hungry colony of vampires get wind of this and move in for a thirty day feast, the town's sheriff (Hartnett), his estranged wife (George), who's missed the last plane out of town before the long night and an ever decreasing handful of survivors have to fight to stay alive until dawn.
As horror films go, this is a good 'un, reminiscent of early John Carpenter movies such as The Fog. Its strength is in the characters, who are interesting, well delineated grown ups rather than the vapid teenagers of many contemporary horror movies. In order to get us to care about and identify with the characters, the film takes time to establish the town, its inhabitants and its isolated way of life with the Alaskan snowscape as a beautiful, unnerving white desert cutting them off from the rest of the world. Director Slade introduces the vampires slowly, first as shadowy figures who grab their prey and disappear into the darkness leaving a bloody trail behind them. When we finally do get a good look at them, they're a pretty scary looking lot - a cross between the Addams family and Dracula with dead white faces, long finger nails and discoloured, pointy teeth, unlike the traditional white fangs. Probably especially nightmarish for Americans with their obsession with having pearly white choppers. Beware obviously of any creature, who doesn't appear to have a good dentist. Huston is both unrecognisable and im press ive as their leader wearing a sort of frock coat garment and speaking what may or may not be Romanian (with subtitles), while the humans led by Hartnett and George play their parts with conviction. There's also an interesting performance from Ben Foster as The Stranger, infected and enslaved by vampirism but not actually one of them, who leads his masters to Barrow. The sheriff should have looked at his teeth. Sure fire giveaway.
There may be a few gaps in the logic of the story, if you think about it hard enough - its resolution for example is a bit suspect - but overall it's well written and well thought out, appropriately gory in places and has a strong visual style. And while it may not scare you to death, it should certainly make you jump in places.
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