30 Days of Night

The premise of 30 Days of Night has just got to be the ultimate wet dream for your average vampire. Somewhere deep in Alaska, the sun sinks permanently for one month each year and the whole place plunges into darkness, 24/7. Vampiric strangers arrive the moment this happens and begin a four-week-long rampage of killing and destruction, sucking the life (and blood) out of the community. Trying desperately to control this outbreak, the town's somewhat estranged husband and wife sheriff team, played by Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, must find a way to stop the carnage and save the citizenry until the sun shines once again. Vampire movies as a rule have seen better days, but this take seems fairly fresh and, as these things go, pretty damn realistic. These guys are ugly suckers and definitely out to picnic on the population. Heads come off, various limbs are unattached, faces are smashed in, and blood flows everywhere in the snowy, dark environment in which the film is set. Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) is a mysterious stranger who arrives in town, heralding the oncoming blast of violence to follow. Most interesting among the vamps is a guy named Marlow (Danny Huston) who speaks a nonsensical language but really delivers as one scary dude. Take away the conventions of your typical horror flicks and this thing could be a typical western where the upstanding sheriff tries to save the town from a group of invading outlaws. Basically, at its heart this comic book adaptation is just pure unsaturated gross-out fun right in time for Halloween!