30 Days of Night: Dark Days

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.

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.

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.

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.

So I wasn't what you would call, a huge fan for the first 30 Days of Night movie. I hadn't read the graphic novel, but I heard the movie was a fairly accurate adaptation of it. I did enjoy it, but I felt the pacing was slow, the characters weren't very well acted or flushed out, and really for a movie...devoid of any extensive plot. It was a slow, but occasionally fun watch.

Dark Days, the straight to DVD sequel of 30DON, delivers a lot of the same, only with a smaller budget. The basic plot is as follows: Stella Oleson, one of the few survivors of the first movie (albeit played by a different actress), is out for revenge on all vampires for the death of her beloved husband Eben. She makes her way to a major city, where she holds what are essentially vampire awareness seminars as a way to draw out the occasional one or two inquisitive vampires. This catches the attention of a small pod of vampire hunters, who contact her for their crusade against the uber vampire...Lilith.

The plot really isn't too shabby, but feels very under worked in this film. The lead females' (except for Lilith who has maybe a total of 5-7 minutes screen time) have a pretty believable performance, the lead males are...eh...well they're there at least.

The special effects for a straight to DVD are actually really well done in this film, it's somewhere in between expensive made for TV movies and terrible Hollywood films that should never have made it to the big screen. Cgi isn't hokey, make-up design for the most part is pretty well done. Although the teeth prosthetic look well...well they're kind of like those fake vampire teeth you pick up in the 99c bin during Holloween. Some of the gruesome death scenes and graphic gore is done quite nicely though.

The reason I didn't really care for this movie is the pacing is just terrible. The plot doesn't have enough material to fill up an entire movie, so we get these long dull sequences that just feel like filler. The action isn't too bad, but all of it is filmed in darkness illuminated by flickering lights. The scenery is almost entirely a warehouse district, and tunnel scenes...which can easily BE shot in a warehouse, so your eyes will get bored with the sets. This combined with the sub-par acting by many individuals in this film...just made this film so very...meh.

Basically it was interesting enough that I was able to sit and finish watching it, but it's a completely forgettable film for anyone who's not a die-hard 30 DON fan. It's a fairly bland vampire action flick, personally if I were to watch it with company I'm fairly certain everyone would be too bored to finish it.