30 Days of Night

Running Time: 1 hour 53 minutes MPAA rating: R

GRADE: C

A few months ago, I first got wind of "30 Days of Night" and thought, "Man, what a great idea for a horror movie!" Imagine you were a vampire. What would be your ideal situation? "30 Days of Night" answers that question.

The setting is Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States, which (according to the film) is dark for 30 straight days. (Of course, the real Barrow gets a couple months' worth of darkness, but let's not quibble.)

A group of vampires takes advantage of this remarkable situation in order to feed off the entire population of 152, then use the oil from the pipeline to burn down the entire town to destroy any evidence that vampires exist.

Great premise, no? And for the first, oh, 45 minutes, the movie totally delivers on your expectations: Great suspense, creepy characters, some pretty good gore. You know, all the stuff that makes a B-movie great.

Then ... well, things pretty much fall apart. The pace slows down; you have no sense of time. And that's the big problem.

The movie takes place over the span of a month, but it looks like 90 percent of the town gets eaten up within the first 15 minutes of the vampire invasion. So, after a while you gotta ask yourself: If there are only four people left in the town, why are all these vampires sticking around? The food's all gone.

That's the danger of letting a movie slow down. The audience gets time to notice how stupid the movie really is. Speaking of stupid, Josh Hartnett's in it. The girls think he's dreamy. I think his eyebrows are a quarter-inch away from being more interesting than he is.

I can't totally recommend "30 Days of Night." Except for an interesting premise, the film doesn't really break any new ground cinematically or horror-wise. It's like a low-rent "28 Weeks Later." It's definitely a rental.

(c) 2007 King Features Synd., Inc.