Horror Film Review

30 days of night was such an entertaining film and very bloody and gory, so I certainly thought it was worth a mention and review.

The film itself is a movie adaptation of a wonderful graphic novel written by the screenplay writer of the film Steven Niles and with art by Ben Templesmith, the artwork of the graphic novel stuck with me for a long time with it’s use of dark colours and vivid professional design.

30 days of night, the film itself is a worthy translation in terms of the concept, which is set in an Alaskan town called Barrow and the story begins on the last day of sun when the Alaskan sun sets for 30 full nights and this brings with it some very nasty vampires who come to feast on the inhabitants of Barrow.

These vampires are not your typical “I Vant To Suck Your Blood” they just do it and rip peoples throats out and move on to the next victim, the vampires have a language that almost sounds latin or old world and this makes it all the more scary for me (I always found Latin quite scary for some reason!)

As with any film of this genre and lots of gore and bloody guts, a few survive and have to hide out for the remainder of the 30 days, and as such some of the towns annoying characters get picked off too…lets cheer!!

The big bad vampire is a vampire called Marlow played by Danny Huston.

 And he thinks he calls the shots but there are a few things in the film that say he doesn’t, for instance he says to the other vampires to cut the heads off the dead because they shouldn’t turn into vampires, but a few people in the film become vampires, so he can’t be all that good as a leader, fair enough some of them do get bit by other vampires and such but anyway he is still a very vicious blood thirsty vampire as are the rest of them.

Plus they don’t look like the traditional vampires either which is a refreshing change, they have shark like teeth and black demonic eyes which almost made me poop my pants, but then I realized it was only a film.

Right at the beginning the film builds the tension up by letting the last day of sun add up the preparation of the vampires coming by getting a stranger to prepare for their coming in return for them to take him with them…those poor Husky dogs get stabbed to death.

I liked the ending of the film though and it was a classic ending and one that will go down as the best ending so far in terms of recent films anyway(I hate abrupt endings that fail to close anything…Remember Cloverfield!!?)

The ending is quite sad but on reflection someone had to make a stand against the evil blood suckers before they simply just disappeared, but the love story of the film wasn’t too strong that it over powered the films main plot which again was nice.

Josh Harnetts character Sherrif Eben And Melissa George who played Stella,their acting just seemed to work well together and brought a real sense of emotion to their roles and often makes you think that no matter what, you should talk to someone you care about because you never know what could happen.

All in all the films crew including british director David Slade did an excellent job of adapting this much loved graphic novel story and creating an instant classic for many years to come.

Now when it comes to the evil dead 2, I have fond memories of this film too, the story is pretty much a re-imagining of the original film with added extras and story mythology added to flesh out the history of the dead and the book of the dead.

When it comes to sequels they aren’t usually as good or even up to the standard of the original film that preceded it, but this sequel certainly ads more hilarious fun to the mix as the character of Ash is back, although we don’t quite know if he remembers being there before or he hasn’t and that’s the sequels theme coming into play, which doesn’t ignore the events of the first film it celebrates them with a triple gore encore.

Evil dead 2: dead by dawn is a masterpiece and really surpasses the first film in many ways, the effects are way better than the first film, obviously the factor of more money been spent on it with the success of the first film.

There are some crazy moments in this film that make you join in and laugh quite often and it’s moments that make this film the cult classic that it is, even today it is remembered for it’s cult status among the many horror fans around the world.

The best thing about Evil Dead 2 has got to be the ending, because the end I never saw coming and it made you think another sequel would be made and it as, but not until the early 90’s with Evil Dead 3:Army Of Darkness which will be reviewed next.

All in all the second film in the evil dead trilogy was the best out the lot, it capitalized on the originals success in such a way that it brought with it a new level of horror and a further exploration of the deadites mythology, This is the evil dead film to remember for it’s contribution to the horror genre and one that won’t be forgotten amidst the many imitators it has spawned over time since it’s release.

This is were I rant and rave about any horror films that I have seen recently or in the past and as I am a horror fan I will be reviewing the best of the best of cult classics and modern horror aswell as Hammer horror classics and other Universal Studio horror movies of the times.

This post serves as the introduction and then the next post will be reviewing one of my most favourite films “The Evil Dead“

I hope you enjoy this trip down horror lane as I am a horror film fanatic, who mainly watches horror films out of any other film/movie genre.

The evil dead, such a classic film from the early 80’s.

The story takes place when a group of friends travel to an old wooden cabin in the woods for a little break away from what stresses they had before, only to be confronted with the evil dead, one by one they turn into the zombie dead possessed and it soon becomes a struggle for survival for the remaining few, the spirits of the dead are waiting.

This is a fun film at times and it really was a breath of fresh air at the time and even today, while some hail Evil Dead 2 as the best of the trilogy, which it is, (but I’ll be reviewing that one next!) I think this had the makings of a cult classic from day one, as the idea behind the story was a simple one, it deals with bringing the dead out of hiding with a sumarian script and bobs your uncle the evil dead appear, although they are invisible they appear in the form of possessing the living, which makes it a great idea to pick off some of the annoying characters (even though they are all annoying in some way)

When the darkness approaches the evil dead come, knocking down trees in their wake, some of the effects are quite good considering the low budget of the films production, it is all about however the creative direction of the director Sam Raimi and all of his production team the reason why they pulled it off right.

I also remember at the time of first watching this film that the location of the film was an original one and one that was a good choice, in the woods around a log cabin, such an iconic horror movie location as it almost seems like others seemed to try and emulate it in many sub standard horror films that followed.

The necronomicon which is in fact the book of the dead, is what was used to bring the dead back to life or undead life at least, only by reading the passages from the book would the dead rise again, the book itself was made from the skin and written in blood, which was nice.

The evil dead also launched the career of Bruce Campbell who went on to star in the two sequels which was of course Evil Dead 2 and the Army Of Darkness.

The original evil dead film brought with it a cult following that transcended on to the demands of the sequel, although the chainsaw is an iconic image for this film alone and the shotgun comes a close second.

Like all low budget movies starting out, especially the creatively inventive ones, there always seems to be a family of fun atmosphere that goes into the creation of these films and everyone and their granny seems to want to be a part of it and this shows for some of the bad acting, but this is forgiven for just the fun ride of the film that delivers on all levels.

Deadites as the character Ash refers to the zombie dead are the main reason why anyone would want to watch this film alone, so go and watch it again and again, because I do at least twice a month, maybe more.