- The Guardian,
- Friday April 18 2008
David Slade's film is a vampire movie with a real sense of style both visual and visceral, increasingly hard to do since Shaun of the Dead's deadly accurate genre spoof.
It has a good premise - the undead are taking advantage of the Alaskan weather that drove Al Pacino round the twist in Insomnia. Pacino battled 24-hour daylight, but this is the other side of the coin: a sunless month being a kind of holiday paradise when you're seriously ray-intolerant, like chief vampire Danny Huston, and the below-zero temperatures keep corpses nicely preserved.
As usual, Huston acts the leads off the screen and heads a properly disgusting and dangerous rabble which weirdly has its own subtitled language, with not a vegetarian among them. Main man Josh Hartnett does a decent enough job here alongside estranged wife Melissa George, and Brit David Slade's direction ensures that with a howling wind and desolate outlook, you feel this chill in your bones. It's also a plus that unlike many, it doesn't take all of its cues from its genre predecessors: RioBravo and Assault on Precinct 13 spring to mind at times for its paranoia and outnumbered good-guys scenario. Aerial shots, meanwhile, point out effectively how helpless and ant-like the team are in this cruel context - unbelievably Alaska's sun-free month also features a booze ban.
On the downside, it does get repetitive and could have used leavening with a hint of black humour now and then, but its dramatic and very visual conclusion is memorable.Scaremeister Sam Raimi is a co-producer and it is based on Steven Niles' graphic novel, a striking miniature version of which is included with the DVD. Most amazingly, it was filmed in non-arctic New Zealand - see from the two-disc extras how the makeover was done. There's also a 40-minute prequel, Blood Trails, available separately from Icon. The graphic sequel, Dark Days, is now set to become the film sequel, too.
