3 Stars

Directed by
David Slade

In order to make a great movie you first need a good script   ( Not a great script, although that would be better, but a good one   ( That's what David Slade had when he directed his first one, “Hard Candy,” and that was one of the best thrillers of last year   ( This one, however, is more of a standard gorefest   ( Buckets of blood in a creepy setting with very little character development, which is the main problem with the film, there should be rather less and it should have been done better   (

Barrow, Alaska is above the Arctic circle, which means that for about a month in the winter, the Sun doesn't come up at all, something, as lead vampire Marlow   (Danny Huston) comments, is “something we should have thought of ages ago   (” Indeed they should have   ( The film begins with a mysterious stranger   (Ben Foster) entering Barrow, as the town with a bunch of broken cell phones   ( He is here to prepare the way for the undead as the rest of the town prepares for midwinter night   ( Fine ) 

Sherrif Eben  (Josh Hartnett) goes around making his final daylight rounds, his ex, Stella   (Melissa George), who works for the state fire department, is doing hers   ( Why she misses the last plane out, is as stupid as stupid can be, and it would have been much more satisfying to have figured out some other excuse so Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson's script can get down to business, Vampires on call 24/7 for almost five weeks   (

The vampires are straight out of Anne Rice, no not the urbane, ones like Lestat, but all the others that basically serve as cannon fodder, and have no redeeming characteristics whatsoever   ( They can do all sorts of nifty things, but they're on a mission, and nothing can stop them except Eben, Stella and the local hermit Beau Brower   (Mark Boone Jr)   ( Of course they TRY to have some character development, but it never gets very far, which is okay because the audience for the film doesn't particularly care about that sort of thing   ( It's not quite torture porn, but there are lots of flying body parts to play with   ( It's that fan base that this film was made for, and they're the one's who are really going to have a good time with it   (

 

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