User reviews

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 see the next movie in the trilogy, 100,000 screaming and furious people chasing down the director and producer of this turd to get their money back.

More seriously, as a fan of the first film, I was as disappointed as I've ever been by any movie after watching this. During the first film, I actually felt emotion while watching. I felt the sudden jolts of shock and fear of course, but I felt more than that. I felt the hopelessness and despair of the characters trapped in their terrible and inescapable nightmare. I actually FELT their desperation. It was fantastic. As far as I'm concerned the original 30 Days of Night is the only vampire HORROR film ever made.

This Dark Days is a Frankenstein creation of hacked up and reassembled modern day vampire movies (that weren't very good in the first place) This could as easily be Blade 5 or Underworld 4 or Vampires 3 , I was half waiting for everyone to start kung-fu fighting.

This was as much a horror as a pie in the face is comedy. I'm sorry. I wanted to like this, and there were so many possibilities to take this after the original, obviously whoever owned it just wanted to try and make some money by releasing something with the 30 Days of Night name attached to it. There is zero writing. The ending sucked. Not because it was predictable, it just sucked like the entire film. And yes another female character undergoes the Ripley / Sarah Connor transformation.

Does anyone ever have an original thought? To all writers, I'm over it. Pick a new theme for every single sequel. Get a new formula, whatever. It's done - like a Thanksgiving turkey. OK? In short the original blew me away, and this just blew. Hope this saves you some money. Jackie

After the destruction and rebuilding of Barrow, Alaska, Stella Oleson (Kiele Sanchez) misses her beloved husband Eben and spends her time giving lectures uncovering the truth about the incident in Barrow and the existence of vampires to the world, following the lead of the unknown Dane. In Los Angeles, Stella uses ultraviolet lights in the auditorium to expose the vampires to the audience but the FBI Agent Norris (Troy Ruptash) tells that the incident was a hoax. When Stella returns to the motel where she is lodged, she meets Paul (Rhys Coiro), Todd (Harold Perrineau) and Amber (Diora Baird) that are vampire hunters and leans that Agent Norris is a wannabe vampire and the vampire leader Lilith (Mia Kirshner) is in the city and ready to return to Alaska. Further, she finds that Dane (Ben Cotton) is a vampire that has kept humanity after his transformation and wants to destroy Lilith. Stella joins the quartet that is armed and ready to battle against the evil vampires.

"30 Days of Night: Dark Days" is an implausible sequel of 2007 "30 Days of Night". The incoherent screenplay has many flaws and poorly explains why the group fights with the vampires in suicidal attacks, either on the pitch black of the underground of Los Angeles or in a ship during the night. In the first film, the strength and the speed of the vampires were absurd and now the human can be protected behind a steel door. Kiele Sanchez performs Stella Oleson that was originally performed by Melissa George, and the scene of her final fight with Lilith is a rip-off of "The Descent". The conclusion is ridiculous and with the only intention of giving another sequel. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "30 Dias de Noite 2" ("30 Days of Night 2")

Unlike the original, which relied on a tense, cunning, isolated, claustrophobic atmosphere which threw me back to that feeling of hopelessness conveyed in John Carpenter's The Thing, this shoot 'em up sequel focuses more on strobe lighting, gun play, and pop out scares to convey it's tone. The acting is on par with a STV sequel, but I won't even begin to touch upon the scripts many weaknesses. The many shaky cam shots running down dark corridors could have been lifted out of The Blair Witch Project. The trigger happy heroine in this sequel could have been lifted straight from the Resident Evil franchise. All-in-all not a bad vampire movie on it's own, but not a great one either. Worth a rent in the genre for you could do much worse, but if you are a fan of the original and expecting more of the same ... well, drop all expectations and wipe your brain blank once you press play.

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.

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 first movie was sooo good that I figured the sequel had to at least be decent - boy was I wrong. The production values are OK but the only thing this had in common with the first movie was the lead character. The vampires were almost like different creatures compared to those in the first movie and the story itself was so boring that I couldn't take it anymore and stopped watching three quarters of the way through. Like I said the production values and acting was OK, and usually I only reserve one star for those really cheap movies that look like they were shot in someones basement; so normally a movie like this would rate at least two stars from me. But any movie that's so boring that I can't sit through it only gets a star.

Did you see Lost boys? Or Twilight? Or even The queen of the damned? Well, this one is more interesting and the vampires are really bad, not babies, Kens or Carnival girls. I like it. I recommend. Well, it's not a super movie, but it's far more than OK. Vampires are a mythology, and the movie 30 days of night is a good job. This sequel is full of good scenes. I love the sex showed and the end is very good. Soon will be a third one, I hope. I imagine if Blade or Underworld could be this realistic. Please, if you did not see this movie yet because of the critics, don't. The cinematography and the photography are so cool, the costumes, the actors and the deaths pay for the DVD.

Please keep in mind that I gave the original 30 Days of Night 7 out of 10. I really enjoyed it, but wouldn't exactly call it ground-breaking. I loved the atmosphere of it. I also appreciated the fact that they didn't rely too heavily on CGI, like the cartoon vamps that were over- used in I Am Legend (released at roughly the same time).

IMDb have already supplied a synopsis, so I'm just giving my review. Sadly Melissa George is not involved. If she was, Dark Days might have received a theatrical release and I might have given it an extra star. Nevertheless, this flick certainly has its moments. You just have to accept Kiele Sanchez in Melissa's role. She does an adequate job. Obviously Josh Hartnett isn't in it, but his character is still very much present in essence and there are still some other familiar actors amongst the cast. I'm a big fan of Mia Kirshner who plays a demonic, Bathory-like queen of the damned and Harold Perrineau (Matrix 2 & 3, 28 Weeks Later, TV's LOST & OZ) who has a rather interesting part to play. I don't want to spoil it. The blood and gore factor is pretty much equal to it's predecessor. There are some very creative methods of liquidizing a vampires skull to ensure that it's really dead. Once again they don't over-rely on CGI.

You'll be pleased to know that the creators of the original comic book series are involved with this straight-to-DVD sequel. I'm not familiar with the comics, but I know enough to guarantee you a 30 Days of Night Trilogy. This isn't just a sequel for the sake of it. Further installments were always inevitable. See also "Blood Trails" and "Dust to Dust".

Essentially, this a worthy follow-up. It's got enough cool bits to keep your attention for 90 mins. All you have to do is accept that Melissa was either too busy filming "The Triangle" or simply felt that the project was beneath her. Then again, it's probably best to save it for Tight-Arse Tuesday or to round out your package deal. I'm predicting that Dark Days will be more popular than the impending Lost Boys 3. I know that's not saying much.

Check out my IMDb List for some better suggestions. "HORROR/THRILLER: Obscure, Overlooked & Underrated" http://www.imdb.com/list/8QFZ78e4Ar8/

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.

I loved 30 Days of Night (2007) was outstanding,it was perfect.

Now to Dark Days

I think the first 5-10 minutes of the movie was really good but after that it went down hill, The Vampires did not look that scary in this movie at all and the scare scenes you can see them coming!.

The acting in this movie was NOT great, however not awful but watchable (Not as bad as The Final Destination or the Remake of A Nigthmare on elm street acting) but not far from it.

I did like a few scenes in this movie, They had some really good ideas for this but soon you will forget them when you see, the scenes near the end, (the last 15-10 minutes or so) those scenes were just laughable because it was so badly done.

now to the ending, it was just very, very, very, very Predicable! (I do seem to like at lot sequels and I do mean a lot of sequels ) This movie is worth seeing at least maybe once. but I won't be seeing this again. I may see it again when it come on TV.

30 Days of Night (2007) I gave 9 out of 10 and for 30 Days of Night: Dark Days I will give 3/4 out of 10.

... especially sequels done direct to video and featuring a "Bewitched" style casting change (Stella, the wife of the protagonist in 30 Days of Night, replacing Melissa George).

Looks like screenwriter Steve Niles, the only common link between the two, convinced someone (a backer? A studio? A high school film class?) to produce this sequel.

The odd thing is, it's not terrible, which really sort of a compliment.

Also, the real horror is that the same screenwriter who was clever enough and creative enough to come up with the idea of a nest of vampires turning an Alaskan town into a month-long buffet (the original movie) could do no better here than send the survivor wife on some sort of mission to wipe out all the vampires on the planet.

And, if you have ever seen a vampire movie, you KNOW that's not going to end well.

Speaking of endings, the last five minutes are astonishingly memorable for an otherwise unforgettable film. Something new, different, and totally unexpected happens. Cool.

Also worth it for Sanchez fans. As her later work in KINGDOM would show, the camera loves her, and she has a knack for stealing scenes, even when she is not trying.

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.

BOTToM LINE up top: If you enjoyed the first film see this one; you'll not regret it.

Now with the review: I rented this film on the first day it dropped. I am a fan of the first one and so when I heard that a sequel was coming out my elation was almost a great as my disappointment that it was STV. Usually the a franchise suffers from a dilapidated entropy when they hit the STV crowd however, this film really did deliver. The switch of actresses for Stella gets a little getting used to, but the character shift is exactly what you would think it might be.

Yes there is an ensemble cast which comes with a whole set of clichés that are of course fulfilled. Yes there is a bit of predictability in that kind of dynamic however, the film really does deliver.

The Vamps are exactly what they should be: Monsters. The action is chaotic and intense. The production is good (not as good as the first, but what do you expect from a STV sequel).

I've seem many complain about the plot. I didn't find anything boring about this film at all. Really a great sequel.

ALL IN ALL: IF YOU ENJOYED THE FIRST FILM SEE THIS ONE, YOU'LL NOT REGRET IT.