HORROR; 1hr 50min
STARRING: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George
Chop-chop: George and Hartnett
Barrow, Alaska, is hardly a realtor’s dream. Isolated in 80 miles of wilderness, it is plunged into darkness for 30 days each winter. Not only that, but vampires can’t wait to get a crack at the foolhardy souls stranded there in never-ending night.
Adapted from Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s horror comic, this bloodsucker saga is brimming with juice. Forget Lestat-style elegance: these freaky creepies are diabolical to the bone. Like the amped-up infected of 28 Days Later, they are a millennial-style monster: lightning fast, preternaturally strong, ugly as sin and hungry as hell. They are also proficient communicators (in subtitled gobbledegook), which makes quite some prospect for boyish local sheriff Eben (Hartnett) and his spunky estranged wife, Stella (George), to sort out.
No concept is more horrible than a month of freezing, cannibal-infested darkness and director David Slade (Hard Candy) goes to town on the eerie and the bleak. So grimly intent is he on keeping the impossible adrenalised and real that going its considerable distance feels almost akin to living it.
