Night Vision

Weather : warm and breezy, or breezy and warm, depending on your preference order for temperature or windspeed as a descriptor of the climate.

Work : Doncha just love five minute meetings that spin out into being hour long extravaganzas generating ten point to-do lists seemingly out of nowhere? Or not as the case may be.

Last night's Lovefilm was 'Thirty Days of Night'. I'd been expecting a typical genre vampire creature feature, but it proved to be a notch above that. The twist is that the action is set in a small town in the far north of Alaska where the sun sets in the winter and doesn't rise again for thirty days, making it the perfect hunting ground for a pack of bloodthirsty vampires. These are not the fey, sparkly Goths of Twilight or the louche, be-waistcoated Southern gentlemen of True Blood, or even the bumpy faced punks from Buffy that disappear in a convenient puff of dust when staked. No, these ones are nasty, cruel, sadistic and unstoppable, killing most of the town's population in short order, apart from the Sheriff and a handful of survivors hiding out in an attic.

It is relentlessly tense in places as well as pushing the boundaries for realistic gore, and the night time, snowbound setting is certainly an atmospheric one, bringing back memories of 'The Thing'. If there are faults, they lie in the large gaps in the thirty day timeline (and begs the question of why the Vamps wait until the sun is about to rise again before covering their tracks), and also the slightly weak ending that could have done with being more ambiguous. Well worth a watch if you enjoy vampire movies.