30 Days of Night

Creeps come out on Halloween, particularly the bloodsucking, flesh-tearing, human-killing kind.

Vampires are the scariest of them all. But you're safe as long as the sun is out. Unless you live in Barrow, Alaska, where the sun goes down for a month, hence the title of the new movie, 30 Days of Night, the latest contribution to the vampire genre.

No, the movie doens't always make sense, and you scream at the screen a character makes the wrong move and gets his or her neck chomped on as a result.

But you don't go to horror movies for logic; you go for a jump-out-of-your-seat good time. And this movie succeeds darn well on that criteria.

Josh Hartnett plays Eben, the local sheriff who still pines for his estranged wife, played by Melissa George. They and others find themselves stranded as a band of vampires led by Marlow descend for a month of good old blood sucking.

The killings are fast and furious with lots of gore splashing everywhere. The acting is decent, and the vampires are scary.

David Slade, who directed the masterful Hard Candy, ratchets up the suspense nicely but he does start to run out of steam a bit as Day 1 stretches into Day 17.

But the movie never really drags, and the performances are enough to keep audiences engaged.

Danny Huston convinces as the lead vampire, even if he doesn't say hardly a word of English through the whole movie.

The friend I saw this movie with didn't quite like the ending. I won't give it away, but it is a bit darker than usual. But I didn't mind. It was something different, just like the entire movie.

No great meanings were gleaned from the movie, but this wasn't a deep movie anyway --- just mindless entertainment, which, by the way, is the point.