Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Worst. Movie. Ever.

My friends and I have a weekly tradition of getting together on Monday nights to watch Dexter and cook dinner. We often enjoy trying new recipes while we warm up with the latest Bill Maher on DVR.

With no new Dexter episodes since December, we resorted to TV on DVD – oldies but goodies. Being that we are big Joss Whedon fans, we started with Buffy Seasons 1-3. Alas, unable to bring ourselves to purchase or rent the awful Season 4, we wondered what next to watch and finally decided upon Angel.

Weekly viewings not giving us the opportunity to finish the first season fast enough, I spent Memorial Day weekend at their house in order to have a marathon of cooking and Angel episodes (which go together like peas & carrots, no?).

The day was lovely, we made spring rolls and cheese cups with guacamole, and managed to bang out most of Season One. We saw Doyle die, met Dennis the friendly ghost, and even saw Wesley try to be a man (which he does not achieve until Season 5).

My friends also happen to love horror movies, as do I, and so after the gorge of supernatural Whedonesque, with a few short breaks for Wii, we decided to cap off the evening with a scary thriller that would (hopefully) leave us too scared to go to bed.

30 Days of Night was billed as a “bone-chilling adaptation of the cult-hit graphic novel.”

We disagree.

The movie, indeed, is thirty days of night, which we interpreted as thirty days of hell, or at least that’s how long the 113-minute run-time feels.

The story is about an Alaskan town that is attacked by vampires during the winter. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t the 24-hour darkness in Alaska last longer than thirty days? And isn’t it a gradual change, in that, you ease into the complete darkness with ever lessening hours of daylight over the course of several weeks? In other words, it’s not as if a switch flips and you suddenly go from one day of bright sunlight to the next day of pitch black night.

And don’t even get me started on the zombies from 30 Days of Night, I mean, “vampires.” After spending the day watching Angel, we know what a vampire is like, and it is not a dumb, senseless, throat ripper. No, a vampire is much more efficient in the blood drinking process, and usually wipes his mouth clean afterward.

Vampires.

Not Vampire (aka: zombie from 30 Days of Night)

Holes in the plotline notwithstanding, this was the dumbest, un-scariest movie I have ever seen. Twenty minutes into the epic blood fest, we fast-forwarded through the scenes until we were fifteen minutes from the end.

Sad thing is, we didn’t miss anything.

The only other movie I have had to fast forward through due to a high lameness factor is The House on Haunted Hill. In that case, I was disappointed to learn that the “evil” in the house was really a black smoky blob. Ooooh, scary.

Luckily for the townspeople in this movie, the fight culminates the last day of darkness. If they make it through, they will live to see the sun. We learn that the only way to save the town is if Josh Hartnett becomes a vampire and fights his vampire enemies – apparently he would still get the vampire strength and wiliness, but would remain human in emotion long enough to die by sunlight (on Day 31) in the arms of his somewhat girlfriend.

Explain to me why everyone else who was turned into a vampire immediately became a nasty killing machine but Josh Hartnett was okay for the last fifteen minutes of the film.

I find the scariest movies are the ones that are the most plausible. Here’s to hoping horror movie screen writers will stop being so lazy and start plugging the holes in their plot lines. Cheers.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

the zombies in 28 days later are not vampires, hell they are not even zombies. they are "regular" people infected with the Rage virus, which makes them crazy and kill people.

the guy you also pointed out in your second picture is from 30 days of night, not 28 days later.

Anonymous said...

Amen to the first poster! Buffy? Get a grip ass wipe. "Transplanted to Milwaukee for career, education, and life in general". Good luck with that one.

Anonymous said...

If you are going to write a (rather pointless) article like this you should get your facts straight. It is clearly explained in 28days later that it is a virus which basically makes people extremely violent, vampires are never even mentioned in the entire movie...

Also, you seem to confuse the MAIN BADGUY from 30 days of night from a 'vampire' from 24 days later. So please go back to watching your kiddy show(angel).

Anonymous said...

Yeah I agree with the 3rd comment, you should just go back to watching your kids show because you obviously can't get your head around the concept of 'Films'.

Yeah it did click from day to night, but that was to do with the feeling of the film...

And about the Vampies in it not being messy 'throat rippers'; the script went a different way and showed vampires in a different light. Unlike Angel, which showed the same boring vampires as countless other vampire films and shows before it.

You tried to rant about a film, and failed. I can't stress this point enough, you should just go back to watching Angel which isn't too challenging for you.

Anonymous said...

rofl wut, go back to watching finding Nemo, i'm thinking that's the only kind of movie you're capable of later remembering any details from at all.

Anonymous said...

all above comments: idiots (with the exception of comment #2, but i have no idea what he/she is saying)
30 days of night was the worst movie i've seen, and to those saying that the picture is not a zombie from 28 days later, i simply say this, bloody obvious. of course it's not a zombie from 28 days later! that's the whole point. Although, 28 days later is a great movie. i'll simply ignore any negative view on this comment. isn't deserved to be read. make sure when you make a comment, don't sound like a complete idiot

Anonymous said...

wow. this was the worst rant/review i think i've ever read. all these comments (except for this retard above me) are correct. 30 days of night is great. buffy and angel suck balls and are made for pre-teen little girls.

i do agree that dexter is a great show though.

Ms. Quarter said...

Holy cow - just read these comments as I've been going through the dregs of my blog. I'm sorry that my usualy self-deprecating snarkiness didn't come through in this review.

The only other things I can say are
a) if you post hateful comments at least have the balls to attach a name "anonymous."

b) I highly suspect all above comments were made by one person (or two, the other in concert with said one person), and to that I simply say, please, please, move on.

Sidenote: I can say b with an 80% confidence rate because not many people read my blog and it's not highly publicized. Ergo, it's highly improbable that one of my posts - not even one of my best - would incite such a heated debate. Debate being a relative term seeing as how all of the comments are meant to slay me. See b.