In Brief

30 DAYS OF NIGHT
R, 113 minutes

The makers of the new vampire movie "30 Days of Night" have discovered an amazing secret. Apparently, hidden within the video store, there's a section consisting of hundreds of what are known popularly as "horror movies." Somehow, the director and screenwriters of "30 Days" have gained access to these forbidden movies and they've taken all of their scenes, dialogue, and situations, and pasted them into "30 Days of Night." The result is a movie that you feel you've seen at least twice already on late night cable.

Barrow, Ala., is hunkering down for the titular 30 days of night as the winter sun vanishes for a month, and wouldn't you know it: The two best-looking white people in town, Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Stella (Melissa George), are both stuck within the city limits. But rather than turning into a screwball comedy à la "Northern Exposure," the movie becomes a gore-fest when a bunch of European-looking immigrants — I mean, vampires — shows up to feast on the citizenry. Why they pick Barrow, we'll never know. All the town has is a law that prohibits liquor, as well as the ability to be overlit despite a power blackout and the absence of sunlight. Delivering the same old predictable scares in all the same old places, this is the big-budget version of the county fair spook house: creaky, mechanical, and no scarier than paying your roommate to dress up in a sheet, jump out at you, and shout, "Boo!"