30 Days of Night: Dark Days **
Taking place a year after the Alaskan town of Barrow was decimated by vampires during the annual month long darkness. Stella Oleson (Kiele Sanchez) has spent her time since the attack trying to convince the world of the truth about what happened at Barrow and that vampires exist. She is met with scepticism and laughter wherever she goes. After a meeting in L.A. where she turned ultra violet lights on the audience and burned up a couple of vampires Stella is cautioned by FBI agent Norris (Troy Ruptash) who warns her to stop her crusade. Upon returning to her motel, Stella is met by Paul (Rhys Coiro), Todd (Harold Perrineau) and Amber (Diora Baird) who introduce themselves as vampire hunters. They inform her that the vampires who attacked Barrow were instructed to do so by Lilith (Nia Kirshner) who happens to be in L.A… Blah, blah, blah…
After a series of action set-pieces where first Paul is killed by vampires, then their vampire contact Dane (Ben Cotton) is killed by the now turned vampire agent Norris; Stella decides to take on Lilith and her coven head on.
If you really liked the original ‘30 Days of Night’ you probably won’t like this sequel very much. I liked the original and I wasn’t expecting much of the sequel and was still underwhelmed. Although both movies followed the outline of the Steve Niles graphic novels they are markedly different movies.
Whereas the first movie has character development, good actors, a decent script, a wonderful premise and a good stylish director; this sequel, well, it doesn’t really have any of those. Although to be fair Kiele Sanchez is okay, far better than any of the rest of the cast.
It starts well enough then descends into an action flick where we follow stupid characters doing stupid things. If you’re going to hunt vampires and you know where they are it may be a good idea to do it during the day. Not these clowns, they do all their hunting in darkness. Well, it’s cheaper I suppose. And why do head vampires always look like someone out of an Evanescence video clip?
The SFX is a mixed bag, some of the prosthetics are very well done and some of the blended CGI shots work okay. I think they spent most of the budget on the effects. There are also some pretty good, gory action scenes although some of them though just don’t make sense. It’s established early on in the movie that ultraviolet light kills vampires so no one ever uses it again… They use guns and machetes for the remainder of the movie.
It’s not useless; it’s just not very good. Watch the original or Blade 2 instead.
Quality: 2 out of 5 stars
Any good: 2 out of 5 stars (because I wasn’t expecting much)
socialpsychol 