DVD Review: 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, Examiner.com
DVD Review: 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days
30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, DVD Review: Examiner.com
Starring: Kiele Sanchez, Rhys Coiro, Harold Perrineau and Mia Kirshner
Directed by Ben Ketai
Despite being a source of revenue for actors and studios alike, the words “Straight-To-Video” have rarely produced anything worthwhile.
30 Days Of Night: Dark Days begins approximately 1 year after the attacks in Barrow, Alaska with Stella Oleson(Kiele Sanchez replacing Melissa George from the original) touring across the nation trying to tell her side of the story and what really happened those 30 Days in Alaska. She is of course dismissed as a quack and her story branded a hoax. That is until a rebel group of like minded survivors track her down in Los Angeles to present her with the opportunity to extract revenge upon the vampire queen responsible for all of their pain.
Replacing original cast members is never a good thing, but the semi-recognizable faces of the cast (Coiro & Kirshner have been seen in Entourage, and the L Word respectively, with Sanchez & Perrineau both veterans of Lost) do a passable job in keeping us interested for 92 minutes.
Director Ketai in his first feature length outing, does alright in recreating certain visual styles from the first film, helping the viewer bridge between the two films, but also does a fair amount of plagiarism borrowing from directors like James Cameron and Neil Marshall especially during a sequence towards the end of the film, that was reminiscent of either “Aliens” or “The Decent”.
Ultimately this film is for the rabid fans of the first one, but you might be better off tracking down the original graphic novels on which both films were based.
Available for rent and/or purchase at all major retailers like Amazon.com
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Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird and Rhys Coiro talking 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, Interviews.
Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird talking 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days
Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird and Rhys Coiro On 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, Interviews.
Having already chatted to director and co-writer Ben Ketai, graphic novelist and co-writer Steve Niles and producer JR Young about their vamp sequel 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days, we thought we’d give the cast a chance to spill their guts, so to speak.
Were you guys fans of the original 30 Days film and/or graphic novel before signing on for the sequel?
Diora Baird: I was never really into comics, but I loved the first movie. Loved it.
Kiele Sanchez: I’m a fan of both. I mean, I’m not like a graphic novel geek. I thought the first movie was awesome.
Rhys Coiro: I actually haven’t seen the first movie, to be totally honest. But I loved the comic books. I’m a comic book nerd.
Rhys, you’ve done a lot of character work but in this movie you’re more in action-hero mode. Is that a direction you’re interested in taking your career?
Rhys Coiro: It’s certainly fun to shoot guns and if anyone tries to tell you it’s not, they’re lying to you. Ultimately, it’s the same thing from one project to another. I mean, we’re telling stories. I don’t really know what an action hero is. What constitutes an action hero?
Kiele, you’re taking over the role of Stella, which was played by another actor in the original. Did you study her performance at all or did you want to start fresh?
Kiele Sanchez: I watched the first movie and that sort of is Stella’s backstory. I watched it a lot actually. I didn’t feel compelled to emulate her performance or to take some things from what the original Stella had created because it’s a year later and this Stella is very, very changed from the experience. It gave me licence to follow the journey that she was on presently, which was completely different. (more…)
30 Days of Night: Dark Days, Stars Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird
30 Days of Night: Dark Days, Stars Kiele Sanchez
In 2007 the vampire sub-genre was almost reinvigorated. Whilst Buffy and Angel (awesome as they were) had made vampires more relatable, 30 Days of Night came along and brought the bloodsuckers gnashing and growling to the big screen with an cannibalistic ferocity that made them genuinely scary for the first time in years. A stylish, neat and visceral mainstream action horror, it was a superb and necessary step in showing that vampires can still send a chill down your spine. Then, a year later, something terrible happened. Twilight.
Now to be perfectly honest, Twilight isn’t a bad film in itself. It’s just that the effect it’s had on the vampire flick has been absolutely devastating. No longer are vamps blood-sucking phantoms that’ll stop at nothing to sink their pearly whites into your jugular. They’re now sparkly, moaning teenagers who would rather whinge about their man-period than rip some poor unsuspecting victim’s throat out. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if it was a one-off, but due to the entire teenage demographic of the western world going batshit for the all things Twilight, it’s spawned a bunch of sequels and opened the floodgates for a heap of other pieces of flightless vampire shire to come sniffling to the masses like an injured puppy. Naturally, they’re all a far cry from the tons of genuinely scary vampire tales that came before. As such, any hopes that 30 Days of Night would cause the genre to step back into terror territory were ashed within a year. (more…)
30 Days of Night: Dark Days, Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo (2010) at Amazon.com
Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird, 30 Days of Night
30 Days of Night: Dark Days (DVD) Review:
As someone who has both read the 30 Days of Night graphic novels and have seen the films, I have to say there are quite a few differences between the two variations. Usually, a book or graphic novel takes precedence over its film counterpart–ask anyone who has read a novel, and then saw a film based on the aforementioned novel. 30 Days of Night: Dark Days is no different.
For myself, it does have its good points, although it strays terribly from the original plot in the graphic novel until the main end, which I will not spoil. The only familiar things in the film that I noticed from the graphic novel were the opening sequence, the auditorium scene, a few of the new characters, like Dane, Lilith, and Agent Norris, Stella’s need for revenge, and the main ending. It was somewhat disappointing to see that the film’s plot diverged so far away from its graphic novel counterpart; but, in a way, it is understandable, since the first film contradicted certain aspects of its own graphic novel’s plot, or left out characters completely, so its Dark Days sequel had to change some of the storyline around, in order to remain consistent with the first 30 Days of Night film.
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30 Days of Night: Dark Days (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) available at now Amazon.com
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30 Days of Night: Dark Days (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) available at now Amazon.com