God, this movie sucked. I’ve recently been accused of being intoxicated while attending film screenings. This is a lie. But I couldn’t help but think while previewing this latest comic-to-film adaptation, “Man, I wish I was drunk.”

“30 Days of Night” is a horror flick. As such, the plot takes a firm backseat to cheap frights and obvious shocks - the idyllic snowed-in town of Barrow, Alaska faces an entire month of night once a year. Vampires put two and two together, and figure they can feast on its 150-strong denizens in this paradise of darkness. But it wouldn’t be much of a movie without a band of survivors who won’t take this blood-sucking crap any longer.

It’s a simple yet intelligent concept, the kind of idea you could pitch to a movie mogul in thirty seconds and get a green light. And there’s something about horror movies in the snow that is inherently ominous – red on white powder, every dot of blood visible on its clean surface, endless night juxtaposed against its brightness. It worked for John Carpenter’s classic “The Thing” decades ago, but little else since.

This film is no exception, taking a great model for an original horror flick and falling face first into the ice-cold trappings of clichés and predictability, with the tiresome “thrills” coming from watching a month-long game of hide-and-seek between our small-towners-turned-superheroes and the chic-and-slick vampires. Guess who wins? But it’s a movie, and most will easily ignore that. What can’t be ignored is the fact that it’s just not very scary. Violent? Yes. Annoyingly gruesome? Most definitely. Thrilling? Barely. Honest-to-goodness fright-filled? Not in the slightest. - 2 stars

Directed by David Slade. Starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston. Category IIB. 113 Minutes.