Hard Candy director David Slade returns to the cinema and attempts to adapt 30 Days of Night, a graphic novel from Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, and succeeds in nearly every facet. The end result is a dark, violent and thoroughly entertaining fright-fest in perfect spirit of its source material. It’s the first enjoyable film about blood-sucking vampires in recent memory. Sadly, the sweet theatrical poster art (which was inspired by the artwork from the actual book) is destroyed here with one of the most unpleasing DVD covers ever. But who cares about that? Don’t let that sway you away from its goodness.

The premise is simple: a small Alaskan town is preparing itself for a month-long period of darkness. The residents are used to it by now, as this is something that happens every year, but the one thing they didn’t count on was a band of vampires showing up to feed. Before night envelopes however, a scruffy-looking stranger with bad teeth (played with a brilliant amount of creepiness by Ben Foster) rolls into town in an attempt to prepare it for the oncoming slaughter.

This character finds himself not welcome rather quickly after creating a scene at a local diner. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Harnett) puts him in a jail cell where he spits out various clues to the impending doom. Once night finally falls, all hell breaks lose, as the town becomes terrorized (and eaten) by the angry vampires who finally figured out that areas with long periods of night are probably the best bet.

There are many elements of the first half of the film that are reminiscent of John Carpenter’s fantastic The Thing (1982). Like that film, it includes vast wide shots of the area to demonstrate how desolate this village is. Nothing can be seen for miles so no help can be sought out from anywhere. There are even portions of Brian Reitzal’s score that are reminiscent to that of Ennio Morricone’s from that film, which create an even more sense of desperation.

A few special features round out the DVD and all are included on both the regular and Blu-ray versions. There is a commentary by stars Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, with the company of producer Rob Tapert (of Evil Dead fame) that surprisingly lacks a contribution with Slade. Eight behind the scenes featurettes, mostly centering on the shooting and effects work, do an adamant job exploring the technical craft of the film.