30 Days of Night: Dark Days

this sequel follows an original that featured a decent budget and some very good actors.

and this, the first sequel, follows the pattern of most. that is as you move farther from the original, the budget shrinks.

and the consequences are: less sets, less location shoots, less action, no helicopter or overhead shots, cheaper actors, cheaper scripts and cheaper directors.

now some directors can take less money and turn out comparable or even better efforts than the original--but these are few and far between.

and this movie definitely suffers from sequelitis.

the whole thing feels stretched.

The original "30 Days of Night" was an original movie with an excellent cast, director, script, and special effects. It wasn't "Jaws," but it was very well done. All in all, a really good horror/vampire movie. Then the powers that be in Hollywood decided to make a sequel. There are the few obvious exceptions, but sequels generally are terrible. This movie is no different. The characters are cardboard cutouts of "Generic Horror Movie Characer 1," 2, 3, etc. The monsters are equally generic and uninteresting. Everybody lives in "stupid world" and would have a hard time crossing the street in real life. There was not even a surprising or twist ending. I have seen better drama, acting and terror in a high school play. The only reason I did not give this one star, is that I have seen the truly great bad movies. If you are looking for something "so bad it's good," you will still be sadly disappointed. It is not even funny to mock. If you want to see a good vampire flick, catch the original or "Near Dark" or "Blood and Donuts." Heck, watch anything which shows either talent or enthusiasm, but do not watch this. It is just sad.

A perfect case in which we see that the only thing that has similarity in terms of quality between both films is the title.

A really must no see vampires movie.

I can't figure out why would they make a senseless crap a sequel of such an amazing film. There were many things in this movie which seemed ridiculous. The story wasn't good either. There were no "30 days of night". Just a few people trying to take revenge of their loved ones. Vampires should've only come out during 30 days of night due to some apocalypse but here they are living even in normal days and no one even knows they are wandering between them. Just doesn't makes any sense. Vampires aren't scary like in the first movie either. Not worth watching.

The original film surprised me as it was much better than I thought it would be - cheesy in places but the Vampires themselves were quite disturbing and by far the best I had seen for a few years in any Vampire film. Unfortunately, in this follow up they lose all of the menace they had first time around, they don't even speak in their 'native' tongue and it becomes an all too familiar standard modern day Vamp flick. The characters don't endear themselves at all, the acting isn't great and the special effects are OK at best. It's a shame as they had the chance to make another film that was a little different from the standard rubbish around today...True Blood, Twilight etc but they failed pretty miserably. It's watchable I suppose but you'll feel slightly let down at the end of it all.