IN his last film, Hard Candy, director David Slade offered the leg-crossing drama of a young girl threatening castration on the older man she suspected of stalking her.

In the incredibly blood-splattered 30 Days Of Night, he offers a different kind of terror. This time the threat is a band of flesh-tearing, bone-munching vampires whose arrival in the isolated Alaskan town of Barrow coincides with the period each winter when the place is plunged into total darkness for 30 days. Based on a graphic novel, the movie version has more plot holes than a string vest and the 30 days that the survivors hold out against the vampires seem more like three days.

Josh Hartnett is the sheriff having a bad day when huskies are found dead and the town's power supply goes down.

Those unlucky enough not to have caught the last plane out of town are left in the dark, dodging newcomers eager to feast on them in the most unpleasant manner.

Slade varies the confrontations and deaths, but never sparing the blood as residents are torn limb from limb and vampires fall into mincing machines or are juiced by snow ploughs.

This concentration on action leaves little time for personal dilemmas, apart from some rudimentary conflict between Hartnett and Melissa George as his estranged wife. On the plus side, Danny Huston makes a great and grisly vampire leader, probably one of the few screen bloodsuckers whose dialogue needs subtitles.

Stars: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster
Running time: 113 mins
Rating: Three stars