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Had drinks and went to see 30 Days Of Night last night. Well-done movies in the vampire genre are always compelling, much more so than zombies. Insatiable hunger is scarier when it's paired with the reflexes to capture prey.

In the movie, vampires take over a remote Alaskan town during the month of darkness peculiar to that region. The vampires are appropriately freaky, with beady, gerbil-like eyes and a guttural language. As they pick off the human population, the night echoes with their otherworldly screams. There's a palpable tension among the actors as they cower in dwindling areas of shelter, and scurrying from building to building like clumsy mice. But the strain of being hunted isn't the scariest part of this movie - it's the blue light thrown off by the snow, and the real terror that must come with total isolation, that gets to me. I'm fascinated by the idea of living in a remote climate. Can you imagine being a hundred miles from anywhere, with two feet of snow on the ground and no electricity, with nothing to do but wait for spring? Hoping you don't break a leg, or run out of food, or be driven mad by the silence (a la The Shining)?

There's a primitive fear that this movie touches on, and it's the low-lying, vague awareness that we are still vulnerable to the elements. One of the most monstrous things in this movie is the indifferent savagery of nature. Our feeble defense is the act of cooperation, and even our best efforts are most often met with failure. Without giving too much away, I could have done without the romanticized ending. Out in the cold, it's every man for himself - and even the most sincere of relationships can't surmount the desire for self-preservation.