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Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster. Thriller. Written by Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson. Directed by David Slade.

FILM SYNOPSIS: For 30 days every winter, the isolated town of Barrow, Alaska is plunged into a state of complete darkness. It's a bitter time when most of the inhabitants head south. This winter, a mysterious group of strangers appear: bloodthirsty vampires, ready to take advantage of the uninterrupted darkness to feed on the remaining town residents. Barrow's Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett), his wife Stella (Melissa George), and an ever-shrinking group of survivors must do anything they can to last until daylight.

PREVIEW REVIEW: A cross between vampire and an evolved zombie, these creatures are a nasty bunch, but dumber than a bagful of hammers. For example, there’s the snow; if you’ve ever lived around snow, you understand that footprints are easily detected in the snow. Yet, the blood-drinkers can’t seem to follow their prey despite the fact that there’s a foot of snow wherever you walk! Inconsistencies bug me. Stupid writing bugs me. A filmmaker’s contempt for his audience bugs me. Graphic torture and brutality in place of eeriness in horror movies bugs me. This film bugs me.

When Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was made in 1931, it was scary to filmgoers because they hadn’t seen such imagery. It’s no longer as frightening, though still atmospheric and eerie, a testament to the fact that we’ve become somewhat desensitized to things that spook us in the movies and, like junkies, we need more gruesomeness to satisfy our spine-tingler factor. The 1930s horror movies were in actuality morality plays, good vs. evil tales. In them evil was eventually defeated by good. What’s more, the makers of these movies were prevented from showing contempt for God. Oh, how Hollywood’s ghouls changed.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula, his monster was an omnipresent creature who contemptuously burned a crucifix with a stare, rather than turning away from the significance of the cross – something the vampire had done ever since Bela Lugosi first put on a set of fangs. This new spin changed the entire theme of the Dracula legend. No longer was God the conqueror of the devil; now man alone was in control of his fate. Before you remind me that the Count was only a work of fiction, I want to point out that it’s not the movies that disturb me so much as the messages contained in those movies. Coppola’s Dracula is humanism in its most monstrous form. It denies the supremacy of God and perhaps His existence all together. So does this recent vampire flick.

Over the decades horror masters have continued to find a spin for their scary creations. The 1950s were mostly goofy with prehistoric lizards breathing fire and trampling over Tokyo; the ‘60s gave us Britain’s candy apple blood fests from Hammer Films; and the ‘70s showed promise with Jaws, Night of the Living Dead and… All the President’s Men. (Hey, if that guy wasn’t a vampire, I’ll eat wolfbane.) But audiences were beginning to find graphic depictions of the destruction of the human body to be more acceptable and somehow more satisfying. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, horror films became little more than gruesome showcases for studio special effects departments. Good vs. evil themes were replaced with personifications of evil. Malevolent and apparently indestructible ghouls such as Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Kruger, Halloween’s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th’s Jason returned sequel after sequel to kill as many randied teenagers as possible in 96 minutes. But now the murderers have taken on a decidedly more torturous zeal.

Certainly, there have been exceptions to that rule. With 1999’s Sixth Sense, director M. Night Shyamalan returned to suspenseful Hitchcockian elements in order to unnerve the audience. Psychological tension was used in that film rather than pelting viewers with sadistic brutality. The strength of Shyamalan’s chiller lay in what is suggested rather than seen. Besides being an arm-grabbing suspenseful thriller, Shyamalan’s other great fright flick Signs, contained a subtext about a man losing, then regaining his faith. That film also had an intriguing take concerning coincidence in our daily lives. It asked questions such as, “Are the details of life governed merely by happenstance, or are they a part of a great plan? Do things happen by chance or do they purposely serve to develop our nature?” Signs was the thinking man’s horror film.

Thinking man’s films are limited in any genre. And that term could in no way be applied to 30 Days of Night. It’s spooky and action-filled, but it’s also gruesome, dumb and dreary. Gory and full of blood and f-words, it also shows disdain for God. In one scene, the head demon says there is no God. And that is the one and only mention of the Creator in the entire film. No one even wears a cross. You’d think somebody would be praying, considering their entire town’s populace is being eaten alive by children of the night. It’s as if the filmmaker goes out of his way to exorcise God from our consciousness. And that is the scariest element for me concerning today’s horror genre. It’s horrifying what many filmmakers want to believe in and what they don’t.

Like all living things, the spirit of man needs to be nourished. I couldn’t say it any better than the following quote from the film I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. You might keep it in mind when attending any new release, let alone horror films. “Your head is like a gas tank. You have to be really careful about what you put in it, because it might just affect the whole system.”

Distributor: Sony Pictures