30 Days Of Night - DVD Review

Forget Blade’s slick techno-vamps and Buffy’s kung-fu neck-chewers. The blood whores unleashed in this bleak outing are filthy and sadistic enough to make you pack a suitcase for the Sahara. Descending on the isolated Alaskan town of Barrow just when its annual blackout month kicks off, these dentists’ nightmares have their pick of the freshest human meat 24/7 – including town sheriff Evan ( Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George). David Slade’s sophomore feature is as divisive as his debut nerve-shredder Hard Candy. Faithfully adapted from Steve Niles’ graphic novel, it’s a humour-free zone for 100 sometimes-oppressively grim minutes. Still, the visual fizz – blood-bursts on snow in a creeping overhead shot of the bedevilled town – puts this in a higher bracket than most recent Holly-horrors. No end of featurettes on this two-disc set, but they’re trumped by a reprint of Niles’ original, masterful yarn.