30 Days of Night: Dark Days, DVD Review
30 Days of Night: Dark Days
Steppin’ to 30 Days of Night starring Josh Hartnet and Melissa George was a horror smash hit and it was only a matter of time before a sequel followed and it came under the title, 30 Days of Night-Dark Days.
The film would follow Melissa Georges character Stella however the director wanted a new actress to play the role. Initially it was sited they wanted someone younger and with more of a name to play the role but they ended up with Kiele Sanchez. I know who! She apparently was in ‘Lost’, ‘Samantha Who’ and is currently starring in ‘The Glades’. However she is no Melissa George.
Dark Days is set in LA so doesn’t quite have the same feeling of threat to it. It follows the character of Stella as she tries to expose Vampires to the world. A group of renegade Vampire hunters recruit her to go after Lilith, the Vampire Queen.
This plot-line was reminiscent of the Borg Queen in Star Trek, she comes out of nowhere and is the brains of the operation. When Stella discovers there is a new ship setting sail to the Arctic Circle for the next 30 days of night she brings the fight to them.
As a Vampire film the feature isn’t bad, L Words/Vampire Diaries ‘Mia Kirshner’ brings an element of horror to the film as Lilith but Dark Days works more as an action movie than a horror. Stella is now an ass kicking femme fatale in the same vein as Milla Jovovich Alice in Resident Evil.
That is why as a sequel to 30 Days it doesn’t fit. It’s no longer ordinary people fighting for their lives but seasoned hunters out for revenge.
The film is well worth watching but as a franchise movie it pales in comparison to the first installment.
Apparently there is going to be a third as they initially always wanted it to be a trilogy and that working title is ‘Return to Barrow’
It went straight to DVD in the States so expect the same here and can be currently viewed on line.
by candlemansa, Gaycork.com
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Kiele Sanchez, Sex Scene, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, Dread Central Review
Producing a successful film sequel is a daunting task, particularly when its predecessor is a film as beloved by fans as 2007’s horror hit 30 Days of Night. Fortunately, director Ben Ketai’s 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, which streets to DVD and Blu-Ray on October 5th from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, is a worthy successor to David Slade’s 2007 original. It’s dark, disturbing and nihilistic, and one hell of a ride.
Co-written by Ketai and originator and co-producer Steve Niles, the film stars Kiele Sanchez as ‘Stella’ (stepping into the role previously essayed by Melissa George in the original), a woman bent on illuminating the public to what actually transpired in her Alaskan town of Barrow a year prior–namely, the massacre of ninety-eight men, women and children at the clawed hands of a group of particularly nasty vampires. With her speaking engagements rather unsuccessful in convincing the masses of the supernatural menace, Stella is unexpectedly recruited by three other victims of related vampire attacks (Coiro, Baird and Parrineau), who alert her to the existence of Lilith (Kirshner), the vampire queen ultimately responsible for the genocide of her Alaskan town’s inhabitants. Together, the quartet set off to avenge the murders in the underbelly of Los Angeles.
A faithful adaptation of Niles’ 2004 graphic novel of the same name, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days opens with a brief and effective recount of the events of the original film and then segues into a Se7en-esque title sequence, which serves to ground Dark Days’ narrative in the urban decay of downtown L.A. Exposition is kept to a verbal minimum with Stella’s pathos following the death of her friends and husband Eben in the first film laid out quickly via the pill bottles and handgun which occupy the bedside table of her seedy hotel room, and with that Dark Days is off and running. (more…)
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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Fantastic Fest 2010 Review: '30 Days of Night: Dark Days', Starring Kiele Sanchez, Diora Baird
Kiele Sanchez in '30 Days of Night: Dark Days'
As the film opens we learn that the only survivor of the Alaskan vampire massacre that we all enjoyed in the first film is one Stella Oleson (Sanchez here, Melissa George in Part 1). Of course nobody believes her story of how Barrow was destroyed by a pack of ravenous (and very opportunistic) vampires, but Stella is about to deliver a very unique lecture. Let’s just say she “outs” some vampire spies in very clever fashion (but neglects to bring a camera), and is then forced to hide out in Los Angeles while the local vampires hunt and harass her.
From this point on, 30 Days of Night: Dark Days goes quickly downhill. What starts with a nifty gimmick promptly devolves into a 17th-generation Blade sequel that would probably feel more at home on the Syfy Channel than pulsing through your over-qualified blu-ray player. Although certainly not without a few merits (director Ben Ketai has done fine short films and could probably deliver a slam-bang horror film given a halfway-decent budget), this disappointing follow-up fails to capitalize on even the most obvious of options. (more…)
Dread Central Exclusive, Actress Kiele Sanchez Talks 30 Days of Night: Dark Days
Kiele Sanchez in '30 Days of Night: Dark Days'
“It was a difficult challenge I think at first, just because I had never done something like that,” actress Kiele Sanchez told Dread Central of her casting as ‘Stella Oleson’ last November during the principle photography of 30 Days of Night: Dark Days in Vancouver, Canada.
Bundled in a cold warehouse in Terminal City on the set of director Ben Ketai’s sequel to 2007’s hit 30 Days of Night (the sequel Dark Days bows direct-to-video from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on October 5), The Perfect Getaway actress was thoughtful regarding her assumption of the film’s lead character, as originally essayed by Melissa George, and spent time waxing on that as well as the other challenges inherent in portraying the character.
“I think that in the first graphic novel Stella starts off as so different (from the sequel) that it gave me a lot of freedom to sort of do it my own way,
“I think that in the first graphic novel Stella starts off as so different (from the sequel) that it gave me a lot of freedom to sort of do it my own way,” said Sanchez of the character of Stella, a woman whose husband, Eben (played in the original by Josh Hartnett), and fellow townsfolk met their grisly end in the original film in the Alaskan town of Barrow. “I think also, due to the fact that there’s been eleven months (of narrative) between the end of the first film and this one, that there’s been a lot of transformation that happened to Stella over that time period so that also gave me a lot of freedom to pick up in a different place,” continued Sanchez. “Not just because it’s a different actress that is playing the character, but because Stella is in a different place.”