30 Days of Night

This vampire flick has some pretty impressive beheading scenes, but little else. Josh Hartnett plays the sheriff of an Alaskan town where the sun doesn’t shine for 30 days, making it prime fodder for vampire types. Director David Slade evokes a hint of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and some of the sequences, especially an extended shot from above where we see many townspeople getting jumped by vampires, are impressive. But some of the choices, including Ben Foster as a stranger with one of the more annoying voices in cinema history, are unfortunate. The vampires talk like Klingons, and Danny Huston as lead vampire Marlow is strange casting. Worst of all is Hartnett, who seems to think he’s in some sort of high drama. Still, there’s a beheading scene in this movie that goes into the Gore Makeup Hall of Fame, if there was such a thing.