Lacking character

Gary Morgan

01 May 2008

This week's DVD rental chart, as supplied by www.blockbuster.co.uk, is as follows:

1) St Trinian's
2) Alvin And The Chipmunks
3) Stardust
4) Run, Fat Boy, Run
5) Enchanted
6) The Invasion
7) Beowulf
8) The Kingdom
9) Ratatouille
10) 30 Days Of Night

Review: 30 Days Of Night (18)

THE VAMPIRE genre returns to the big screen in David Slade's gory blood-spiller 30 Days Of Night.
When winter comes rolling into the most northern town in Alaska, inflicting 30 days of darkness on its mere 500 residents, it attracts an invasion of bloodthirsty vampires.
One by one they pick off the townsfolk in horrible fashion, turning the snowy white streets into a sea of red.
Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett) tries his best to protect his people, but pitched against these savage killing machines, it is an unfair fight.
Even the very American rallying call for residents to "arm themselves" fails to deliver the medicine required to ward off the creatures of the night.
Eben and his lambs for the slaughter dodge and weave the razor-toothed killers throughout until the film reaches boiling point, and at the risk of giving too much away, it is a struggle which proves tough to win.
The return of the vampire film to some is long overdue, but while more contemporary and therefore more believable - in as much as you can believe in vampires - Dracula it is not.
Instead of one focal blood feeder, whom we get to know and who has a real character, a background and even a likability factor, this lot are a gang of wondering tormentors.
Slade does not let us in to their make-up or personality, unlike Dracula, and so turns the film into a kind of Dawn of the Dead with fangs.
To its credit it is scary, certainly more so than Dracula, and perhaps the only likeness is that both chief villains like the taste of blood. Maybe it's an unfair, if not an obvious, comparison.
But somehow scary is not enough.
Dracula in many ways is the vampire genre and anything else 'fanged' will always play second fiddle.
30 Days Of Night certainly draws blood, but it lacks a heartbeat, it lacks character and ultimately leaves one feeling somewhat underwhelmed.
Gary Morgan

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