Certainly Bloody, and Bloody Good.

Amidst the deluge of watered-down, teen-oriented cash grabs and remakes we are finally given a horror film with some guts (some spilt, yes.) in 30 Days of Night, and it's a breath of fresh air.

Based on the three part comic book series of the same name written by Steve Niles with art done by Ben Templesmith , we are taken to a small town called Barrow, Alaska, where once a year during the winter the sun goes down, and stays down, for a month. Cue the deranged, yet sophisticated vampires that turn the village upside down into their personal preying grounds. Josh Harnett is cast in the lead role of town sheriff, Eben Oleson, and executes a stellar performance with nary a comedic wisecrack in sight. The movie may not be incredibly deep, but it is still all business

Director David Slade's willingness to allow the story to unfold relatively slowly ensures that the viewer comes to care about the central characters, and there's little doubt that the uniformly strong performances only cement this feeling. And once the chaos erupts the film pushes ahead with effective characters, an original terrifying plot, and a fantastic visual schema.

The original artwork of the comic by Templesmith and its adaptation to film is the real highlight of the feature. His style is very surreal, and at times even blurry, but it works. The color dashes through the lines, and spills onto other features of the page unlike any other artist out there. It's a sort of controlled chaos that the Australian illustrator has now become world renown for. In order to keep Templesmith's look Slade puts the shots through a series of screens and filters that give the picture of very pale blue look. That template when mixed with the color of, let's say, lots of blood, makes the colors and individuals on screen nearly pop out. In order to create the atmosphere so distinct of the book the soundtrack of the film remains very industrial, with crashing metallic sounds working as scare chords alongside aggressive and chunking techno-like parts for when pandemonium really lets loose.

Scott Bowles of the USA Today comments on the film saying that "30 Days of Night manages to do for the vampire genre what 28 Days Later did for the zombie flick: give age-old monsters a modern-day makeover." He's absolutely right. The combination of Niles' writing, Templesmith's initial art style and Slade's direction manage to make vampires scary again.

Though Halloween has passed us by, this feature with keep the all hallows spirit in you just a little bit longer simply because the red stuff just looks so good splattered all over the snow.