30 Days of Night
Review by Ronin

If this is the section for movie reviews, allow me to say my 2 cents. A little background, Halloween has just past, and as tradition goes, I must see at least one scary or horror movie in the theatres, and this year was no exception with 30 Days of Night.

Allow me to start that within 20 minutes of this movie, I was seeing not the classic, or even the new vampire cliches, but the typical horror movie cliches. It starts off with an interesting twist to the Vampire story, by setting place in a small town in Alaska, that for once a year, the sun is gone for 30 days (perfect for us night walkers) Now there are people that remain in the town while others flea the darkness. During this time, there is a discovery of a cashe of stolen cell phones, that have been destroyed by fire, as well the (and if you are a dog lover, you will hate this) the death of a dog sled team. As you can tell, this story begins to revolve our main character, Eben Oleson played by Josh Hartnett (40 Days and 40 Nights and The Black Dahlia) as he begins to investigate the strange happenings in this small Alaskan town, you just begin to see cliche number one.....the flawed hero. And we all know that hollywood's latest flaw in their heros is a divorce. His ex-wife Stella Oleson, played by Melissa George (The Amityville Horror - 2005) just conviently is in town, just before the darkness to set-up another plot angle, and well no need to explain what happens, as we all know that I have established that this movie is full of cliches.

Now with the majority of town gone, just leaving our flawed hero, in a town that has been now cut off from phone service and power, you begin to see the principal characters begin to merge, including the token black guy. As I am watching this movie, I figured the Vampires would be as smart as they began the movie, and slowly creating an air of suspence and horror, allowing more time to have Oleson to investigate further the strange happenings in his quite little town. Now that would make this a better movie, but as soon as the sun goes down, and they do away with a drunken guy, that was making a bet with another drunken guy, on who was going to take the drunken girl home that night, and for the next 30, a blood bath begins, where 20 or so Vampires begin to devour every living human in thier path. No suspence, no thrills, hell not even scary, although seeing the blood splatters all over the freshly fallen snow, was a nice touch. Now anyone that was not a meal, of course began to hide from the threat that is out there awaiting them, and thus the rest of the movie, and including the rest of the horror movie cliches. The outsider, the sceptic, and the scare guy that can give them away at any moment. The only character that was missing, was the one that knew this would happen, and knew all that can be done to protect themselves from the Vampires.

Now I will admit, I did like the old world feel they gave to the modern Vampire, by them only speaking English, when they are speaking with their prey, although the dialogue is limited to a few words, but a nice addition. There is one more scene, that I high recommend, but as soon as I thought it was going to be good, it was ruined, but all I have to say is "I am tired of playing with this one" Without giving the ending away, of course our hero, had to go and face the villian at one point or another, but the ending even got me slightly, having the majority of this movie figured out in 20 minutes or so.

If this movie is still playing in your local theatres, I would not recommend in seeing it, but when it hits the shelves on DVD, and you want to just chill out with a movie, go ahead, but you will find yourself not wanting to recommend it to anyone of your friends, or let alone any of your enemies as well.