It's rare when a horror film delivers legitimate R-rated suspense and thrills. Director David Slade, fresh off his critical success "Hard Candy", has delivered. This movie has a fairly quick set up. Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost city in Alaska. We see most of the townsfolk leaving the town before the impending thirty days of darkness that covers the town each year. A skeleton crew of a sheriff and disparate business owners prepare to hunker down. Into town creeps an outsider who is soon arrested for, well, being a creep. While in lockup he starts hinting that something is coming. This warning is more convincing because the creep is portrayed by the eccentric actor Ben Foster. The sheriff is soon dealing with dead dogs, vandalism, and power outages. What follows is a modern-day vampire tale in the mode of at least a half-dozen classic films ranging from "Night of the Living Dead" to "The Birds." Despite being extremely derivative of the vampire film catalog, as well as the Hollywood action flick, it triumphs. This is due to taking some time to build character development, and then not holding back one iota when the vampires start feeding. Another welcome absence is the smug one-liners that often follow a "big kill" by the hero in such genre films. The acting is competent, with one standout performance turned in by Tony Huston as the lead vampire. Minor quibbles include the use of too many CGI effects, and a lack of a reasonable back story to explain who/what/where in regards to the vampires. We get one scene early on of what seems like the Ben Foster character walking into town after getting off a ship some hundreds of miles from the city of Barrow. Did he serve as some sort of Igor to the vampires and transport them here on the ship? For more answers check out the graphic novel that was the source material. Otherwise just enjoy a well-made suspenseful vampire film.
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