Oh! this film's so bad! What a waste of resources! I was lured into the cinema by the presence of Danny Huston after eye-catching performances in Ivans XTC and The Constant Gardener but how he got mixed up in this is anyone's guess. To give him credit, he is the best thing about this movie.
But he's so outweighed by rubbish there's no redemption.
The plot has got more holes in it than Dracula with cavities. The script is deplorable. The editing is so fast and annoying that I wanted to hit Pause. And - once you've seen a whole vampire - the tension is non-existent, and the film relies on gore and jumps for the duration.
The most ridiculous of MANY plot devices is that - after enduring 29 days and 16 hours of vampire hell (even though it seems about as hellish by the end as it did at the beginning - nothing is made of the sheer hardship that would have been faced, even without vampires lurking) Josh Hartnett decides that NOW is the time to turn himself into a vampire to give his wife a chance to escape.
Not only does turning himself into a vampire barely even make him a better fighter, but when he DOES create a decoy, the silly bint doesn't even take her chance to run away! She just stands and watches him. That's gratitude for you.
And THEN to add dumb insult to already itchy injury, Josh manages to suppress his new vampiric urges long enough to kill himself rather than rip her throat out.
The action jumps about without motive (including a convenient jerk from 'Day 7' to 'Day 27') the snow is wasted; the dark is wasted; the few clever things they do are wasted; the actors are wasted saying stupid, corny things. Any movie which includes in its first scene an actor slitting his eyes around the horizon and saying: 'Who would DO such a thing?' in response to some incinerated mobile phones, is a movie worth rushing out of immediately to get your money back. Sadly, I stayed put.
HOWEVER. In the interests of fairness, the overhead shot of the vampire attack is wonderful and the vampire make up is genuinely scary. I give it 1 mark for each of those things.
But he's so outweighed by rubbish there's no redemption.
The plot has got more holes in it than Dracula with cavities. The script is deplorable. The editing is so fast and annoying that I wanted to hit Pause. And - once you've seen a whole vampire - the tension is non-existent, and the film relies on gore and jumps for the duration.
The most ridiculous of MANY plot devices is that - after enduring 29 days and 16 hours of vampire hell (even though it seems about as hellish by the end as it did at the beginning - nothing is made of the sheer hardship that would have been faced, even without vampires lurking) Josh Hartnett decides that NOW is the time to turn himself into a vampire to give his wife a chance to escape.
Not only does turning himself into a vampire barely even make him a better fighter, but when he DOES create a decoy, the silly bint doesn't even take her chance to run away! She just stands and watches him. That's gratitude for you.
And THEN to add dumb insult to already itchy injury, Josh manages to suppress his new vampiric urges long enough to kill himself rather than rip her throat out.
The action jumps about without motive (including a convenient jerk from 'Day 7' to 'Day 27') the snow is wasted; the dark is wasted; the few clever things they do are wasted; the actors are wasted saying stupid, corny things. Any movie which includes in its first scene an actor slitting his eyes around the horizon and saying: 'Who would DO such a thing?' in response to some incinerated mobile phones, is a movie worth rushing out of immediately to get your money back. Sadly, I stayed put.
HOWEVER. In the interests of fairness, the overhead shot of the vampire attack is wonderful and the vampire make up is genuinely scary. I give it 1 mark for each of those things.