Vampires. I’ve suffered for many years of sheer abysmal vampire sub-genre crap thanks to the likes of different “twists” that was dead in the water. From suffering through the frilly angst ridden vamps thanks to Anne Rice that bred a thousand MySpace emo teens, to the Matrix carbon copy leather clad models a la Len Wiseman, it’s nice to see vampires be horrifying creatures (on film) once again. Thanks to David Slade, and Steve Niles, “30 Days of Night” makes a great transition from the page to the screen. David Slade who made his debut with the masterpiece “Hard Candy” shifts tones and completely amps his energy with what is one of the better horror movies to come around in years. In the vein of “The Thing,” Slade brings us down on a group of workers in the Alaska who prepare for the month of eternal night where the land is shrouded in darkness. But as the hours pass, mysterious events occur around the town. Cell phones are found burned, animals turn up dead, and helicopters are dismantled.

The vampires in this story are also very much cut in the cloth of the infected from “28 Days Later.” Once bitten or scratched, the victims are doomed to quickly become one of the vampires, as their humanity is depleted in a pool of dark eyes that peer out at prey in utter longing for blood. Slade uses his signature chaotic wobbly camera during true scenes of carnage, paired with the utter darkness and desolation of Alaska that acts as a wonderful accompaniment to the vampires who communicate in their own vicious growl laced language and always plan ahead. Mostly, though Slade does include scenes of the vampires communicating, they’re always monsters first and individuals second. They walk around growling in hunger, they’re always scouting for food, and they gain a larger sense of their surroundings than actual residents.

One of the more consistent problems of Slade's film is his inability to actually make the situation before us feel like thirty days. Even with the title cards appearing every so often to notify us of how much time has passed, it still all felt like one night in hell, rather than a whole month. I just couldn't be convinced that this entire story took place in thirty days as Slade really never pulls off the mock length well enough. I just wasn't buying that this was all in thirty days. The feeling of excruciating length never quite rose to the surface.

In spite of the chronological problems, “30 Days of Night” is a tense, creepy, and nihilistic vampire film that redeems the vampire sub-genre, yanking it from the abysmal depths. I enjoyed every bit of its blood soaked story.