Netflix And Chill: 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days (2010)

I first watched 30 Days Of Night: Dark Days about ten years ago, and I remembered it being okay. It just wasn't 30 Days Of Night. That's fine. There's no need to compare a movie to any movie it is remaking or sequelising. Usually. I wasn't feeling as kindly towards the film this time around though. It may not be 30 Days Of Night, but it really wants to use that film to gain some goodwill that it cannot earn by itself.

Starting off immediately after the events of the first movie, Stella (now played by Kiele Sanchez) is spending her time trying to inform the public of the vampire menace, and she has an effective way of dealing with any that may turn up to see her at any of her speaking engagements. There are still too few people who believe her, but she's eventually approached by Paul (Rhys Coiro), Amber (Diora Baird), and Todd (Harold Perrineau). They know how things really are, and the big threat is coming from a powerful vampire named Lilith (Mia Kirshner).

Co-written by Steve Niles and director Ben Ketai, the former also being a main creator of the comic and the latter having worked on some of the different TV shows developed from the property, this is a disappointingly dull affair. It aims to stay true to the tone of the first film, but has neither the budget nor the talent to even come close to it. I don't know why they didn't just decide to use the name recognition on something that could have been a blend of entertaining and over the top bites and bloodshed.

There are some great people in the cast here, and every single one of them is sadly wasted. Sanchez cannot make up for the fact that she's not Melissa George, but Coiro, Baird, and Perrineau deserved much better. The same goes for Kirshner, hampered by the vampire makeup required for her character. There's even a small role here for Katharine Isabelle, but viewers will forget she was in it by the time the end credits roll. That's no way to treat Isabelle. Ben Cotton is treated better, playing a vampiric ally named Dane, and Troy Ruptash is good value as Agent Norris, someone working on behalf of Lilith and co.

When it comes right down to it, there's nothing here that will appeal to those lured in by the 30 Days Of Night "branding". Everything, from the production design to the score to at least one of the lead performances, is disappointingly lacklustre. Everyone involved had a chance to do something interesting, but they went for the safest option instead. Hell, I would have given this a bonus point if it had just taken us right back to Alaska and shown us a complete underground city of vampires all biding their time until the next extended period of night-time.

Ironically, the only thing here that comes close to feeling like 30 days is the 92-minute runtime. Toothless and worthless, although I'll always give bonus points for some of the cast members (Baird, Kirshner, Perrineau, and Isabelle). 

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)

A sequel that nobody was really crying out for, released a decade after the original movie, I have to say that my hopes weren't high for The Strangers: Prey At Night. But I'd heard some people say they loved it, which was a plus, and I knew it was directed by Johannes Roberts (another plus, check out his filmography . . . he's like the modern Renny Harlin of genre fare).

And I ended up enjoying it, in a very different way from my enjoyment of the first film.

Although it starts with the usual nonsense about it being based on true events (almost every movie could be sold that way, considering how little you need to actually link things to reality), The Strangers: Prey At Night quickly sets itself up as something out to entertain, rather than completely unnerve and scare you. Not that it doesn't have unnerving moments. They're just interspersed between scenes that focus on murderous set-pieces, often accompanied by a fine selection of '80s tunes.

A family is heading off on a long journey, and they're due to arrive very late at a trailer park. There's the usual dollop of family tension, this time caused by a strain on the finances as the parents plan to send their daughter to a private boarding school, but that is quickly pushed aside when they start to realise that there's something amiss at their lodgings for the night, especially when a young girl comes to the door twice to ask for someone who isn't there.

Co-written by Bryan Bertino, who directed and wrote the first film, and Ben Ketai, this is a film that feels very much like someone cutting loose and having fun after having to show some restraint the first time around. There are some more kills, a more interesting environment for the characters to inhabit, and more moments that feel enjoyably cinematic.

Roberts directs with a keen eye, with both the script and the visuals allowing for some nice nods to a multitude of other movies (from slasher classics to the thought-provoking work of Haneke), and he maintains a perfect pace as he drags viewers through an 85-minute thrill ride that gets going quickly enough and doesn't really slow down until it's all over.

Cast-wise, the main family unit is made up of Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, and Lewis Pullman. Hendricks and Henderson are both solid as the parents, but it's Madison and Pullman who get to shine more as the kids/young adults. As much as I have enjoyed seeing Madison in the many TV movies she has appeared in over the past few years, I hope to see her in more films that don't feel planned around ad breaks. She's very good here, as is Pullman (who also gave a great turn last year in Bad Times At The El Royale), and both play well off one another as siblings who believably wind one another up until they are threatened, at which point they pull together to show their true united front.

All the more refreshing because it isn't being meta, or feeling the need to add a load of laughs in between the bloodshed, The Strangers: Prey At Night is a very pleasant surprise indeed. I'd even say that it edges just ahead of the first film, and I recommend it to all slasher movie fans.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Malevolent (2018)

Malevolent starts off well enough. Set in Scotland in the 1980s, it's the tale of a brother and sister (Jackson and Angela, played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes and Florence Pugh) who, along with a couple of friends, make themselves money by going in to locations that are apparently haunted and conducting a "clearance". It's quite an easy gig, and they have their patter down to a fine art, but it's not long into the movie when things start to become a lot less fake than usual. Things start to get odd for Angela during what should be a regular, easy, gig. Then things go from bad to worse when they are hired by a woman (Celia Imrie) who claims to be plagued by the spirits of noisy children in her home.

It's not that the acting here is bad, not really. Imrie may be the veteran, and she's good fun in her role, but the performances from Lloyd-Hughes and Pugh are decent enough, as is the supporting turn from Scott Chambers (playing the other main member of the group; Georgina Bevan is also onscreen but given so little to do that she barely makes an impression). James Cosmo is as good as ever in his small role, Niall Greig Fulton does okay, and that covers the main characters.

The script isn't really that bad either. Written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos (based on the novel "Hush" by the latter), it mixes in enough melodrama and decent ideas to create a heady brew. You have a dead parent who was apparently insane, claiming to be contacted by spirits. You have the dynamic of the brother and sister relationship, with the male pushing his female sibling into situations that she starts to find increasingly uncomfortable. And you have the character played by Imrie, eccentric and mysterious, perhaps innocent but perhaps not-so-innocent. There are even one or two decent scares in the first half of the film. Then the second half starts up, moving everything along to a third act that is horribly muddled and misjudged, sacrificing any creepy atmosphere for violence and any subtlety for crude simplicity. It becomes embarrassing long before the whole debacle draws to a depressingly dull conclusion.

Director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson (credited as just Olaf De Fleur) doesn't help. His background, a filmography that includes a number of documentary features and standard fictions, seems to have left him ill-prepared for this kind of material. This may explain why he does better in the earlier scenes that feature the strangeness developing in the background of the central relationship dynamics. And if it was his decision to accompany some spooky visuals in the second half of the movie with horribly unnecessary "spooky" voices then he really helped to undermine what could have been a decent little ghost story before that sharp turn to the violence.

I started off this review trying to be kind, as usual, but the more time I spent writing about it, the angrier I got. It's just so bloody annoying. Especially after a solid, if unspectacular, opening act. So much is left unexplored (background of the characters, emotional baggage, even the fact that it is set in the 1980s . . . something I assumed would figure into the plot but it never does) that the viewing experience just becomes more and more frustrating.

Some will be able to watch this and not become as irked as I was. Good for them. I suggest most people skip this and instead pick one of the MANY better horror titles available.

3/10

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