To be honest I wasn't expecting much from this film but I really enjoyed myself. For some bizarre reason my local Indie cinema decided to open its largely defunct 4th screen (I've seen Home Cinemas with bigger screens) to play the film on Valentine's Day. The premise alone made it an essential view.
The film focuses on a small Town in Lapland which is currently undergoing 30 days of perpetual darkness due to its arctic nights. In this town an old SS officer turned Vampire is conducting a weird and secretive experiement with a comatose girl, after some of his specialised medicine is stolen the town finds itself slowly vamping out.
The beginning of the film, set in 1944, is absolutley fantastic. Creepy, well shot, suspensful, bloody and also ghoulishly funny at times (a scene involving a man trying to frantically keep a coffin nailed shut feels like something straight out of Evil Dead). Once the film hits the present it veers off into two stories, one about the aforementioned SS officer and one about the local kids accidently vamping out. The SS Officer story is absolutley wretched, its hammy, overly serious, has a massive amount of pointless exposition, is full of plot holes, and has utterly awful creature effects (we're talking the MANBAT from Bram Stoker's Dracula kind of awful).
Conversely the other story involving the kids vamping out is utterly fantastic and pretty much secures the film as the best Vampire film of the new millenium in my opinion. This part of the story is far more fleshed out, has more running time, is genuinely clever at times, very funny, and has some truly creepy moments. It also has a surreally brilliant setpiece involving a newly turned vamp and his visit to his girlfriend's catholic parents (complete with evil talking dogs).
It tries way to hard at times but the film is genuinely good fun and is really let down by the plodding substory.
The film focuses on a small Town in Lapland which is currently undergoing 30 days of perpetual darkness due to its arctic nights. In this town an old SS officer turned Vampire is conducting a weird and secretive experiement with a comatose girl, after some of his specialised medicine is stolen the town finds itself slowly vamping out.
The beginning of the film, set in 1944, is absolutley fantastic. Creepy, well shot, suspensful, bloody and also ghoulishly funny at times (a scene involving a man trying to frantically keep a coffin nailed shut feels like something straight out of Evil Dead). Once the film hits the present it veers off into two stories, one about the aforementioned SS officer and one about the local kids accidently vamping out. The SS Officer story is absolutley wretched, its hammy, overly serious, has a massive amount of pointless exposition, is full of plot holes, and has utterly awful creature effects (we're talking the MANBAT from Bram Stoker's Dracula kind of awful).
Conversely the other story involving the kids vamping out is utterly fantastic and pretty much secures the film as the best Vampire film of the new millenium in my opinion. This part of the story is far more fleshed out, has more running time, is genuinely clever at times, very funny, and has some truly creepy moments. It also has a surreally brilliant setpiece involving a newly turned vamp and his visit to his girlfriend's catholic parents (complete with evil talking dogs).
It tries way to hard at times but the film is genuinely good fun and is really let down by the plodding substory.
