Well, I hope that Steve Niles, co-creator of the 30 Days of Night comic book, got what Kevin Smith would call a "motherf***ing movie check" out of this misfiring mess. If Hollywood is going to take your baby and whore it out on Direct-to-DVD Boulevard, you at least ought to get your cut. Of course, unless he needed the money for a life-saving operation, I imagine Niles quickly regretted letting them make this sucktastic sequel. No one who creates anything can enjoy seeing someone else ruin it.
30 Days of Night wasn't a great film. It started pretty strong but got stupider and stupider as it went along and had only two redeeming features. First, it wasn't really a vampire movie. It was a natural disaster movie where the disaster happened to be an onslaught of blood sucking monsters. Second, the vamps weren't angsty poseurs in hip clothes and sexy haircuts. There were animalistic butchers who had as much in common with humans as people do with rabid grizzly bears. Not only does Dark Days not start out as strongly, it gets dumber, faster than the original and largely tosses those two good things down the garbage disposal.
A year after the attack on Barrow, Alaska, we find that the vampire massacre of the townspeople has been covered up and survivor Stella Oleson is on a book tour trying to tell incredulous crowds the truth about what happened. After Stella uses ultraviolet light to fry a couple of vamps at one of her public speeches, an FBI agent covers it all up and tells Stella to get lost or he'll kill her. Through this point of the film, it appeared like it might be halfway decent. The idea of Stella struggling against the vamps and the government that is protecting them for some reason seemed like an intelligent and interesting direction to go. So of course, that promising beginning is completely discarded before Dark Days is 10 minutes old and it turns into every other vampire hunter flick you've ever seen that doesn't star a teenage cheerleader. Stella hooks up with 3 other survivors of vamp attacks, turns into a generic badass with a shotgun and goes after the vampire queen who supposedly controls everything the blood suckers do. Some music that was rejected from the Terminator: Salvation soundtrack and closing scenes that look like outtakes from Aliens top off this crap sundae.
From a gratuitous sex scene where Kiele Sanchez keeps her bra on, thereby negating the whole gratuitous thing, to a good guy vampire to the same final scene twist that got old in horror movies 20 years ago, Dark Days is terrible. Now as I mentioned, the first film wasn't exactly award winning stuff itself but this boring, clichéd, self-negating carbuncle is significantly worse in every way. There are even points where it seems like co-writer/director Ben Ketai is going out of his way to take a leak on what was established in the first film.
If you liked 30 Days of Night, do not watch this movie. If you hated 30 Days of Night, still do not watch this movie. If you've never heard of 30 Days of Night, go read the comic instead of watching this movie.
30 Days of Night wasn't a great film. It started pretty strong but got stupider and stupider as it went along and had only two redeeming features. First, it wasn't really a vampire movie. It was a natural disaster movie where the disaster happened to be an onslaught of blood sucking monsters. Second, the vamps weren't angsty poseurs in hip clothes and sexy haircuts. There were animalistic butchers who had as much in common with humans as people do with rabid grizzly bears. Not only does Dark Days not start out as strongly, it gets dumber, faster than the original and largely tosses those two good things down the garbage disposal.
A year after the attack on Barrow, Alaska, we find that the vampire massacre of the townspeople has been covered up and survivor Stella Oleson is on a book tour trying to tell incredulous crowds the truth about what happened. After Stella uses ultraviolet light to fry a couple of vamps at one of her public speeches, an FBI agent covers it all up and tells Stella to get lost or he'll kill her. Through this point of the film, it appeared like it might be halfway decent. The idea of Stella struggling against the vamps and the government that is protecting them for some reason seemed like an intelligent and interesting direction to go. So of course, that promising beginning is completely discarded before Dark Days is 10 minutes old and it turns into every other vampire hunter flick you've ever seen that doesn't star a teenage cheerleader. Stella hooks up with 3 other survivors of vamp attacks, turns into a generic badass with a shotgun and goes after the vampire queen who supposedly controls everything the blood suckers do. Some music that was rejected from the Terminator: Salvation soundtrack and closing scenes that look like outtakes from Aliens top off this crap sundae.
From a gratuitous sex scene where Kiele Sanchez keeps her bra on, thereby negating the whole gratuitous thing, to a good guy vampire to the same final scene twist that got old in horror movies 20 years ago, Dark Days is terrible. Now as I mentioned, the first film wasn't exactly award winning stuff itself but this boring, clichéd, self-negating carbuncle is significantly worse in every way. There are even points where it seems like co-writer/director Ben Ketai is going out of his way to take a leak on what was established in the first film.
If you liked 30 Days of Night, do not watch this movie. If you hated 30 Days of Night, still do not watch this movie. If you've never heard of 30 Days of Night, go read the comic instead of watching this movie.