Vampires have time to kill in '30 Days' Vampires have time to kill in '30 Days'

Adapted by the director David Slade from Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel about vampires taking over an Alaska town, 30 Days of Night is a series of gory set pieces that seems to have been edited with a meat ax. A major early transition is so clumsy that you may assume that the projectionist accidentally skipped a reel. No such luck: it's a style thing.

After an intriguingly subdued opening section - which introduces the inhabitants of a town above the Arctic Circle that's shrouded in darkness for one month a year - the movie crosscuts between the schemes of a predictably effete, nasty vampire horde (Eurotrash nightclub-crawler outfits, subtitled dialogue) and the besieged citizenry's attempts to hide and fight.

Slade's solid cast includes Josh Hartnett as the stalwart town sheriff; Melissa George as his estranged wife, a fire marshal; Mark Boone Junior as his loutish, antisocial brother; Danny Huston as the flamboyantly cheesy vampire chieftain; and the impishly hammy Ben Foster as a prophecy-spouting jail inmate whose plot function recalls the similar, superior Stephen King mini-series Storm of the Century.

But the performers have little to do besides spill and drink blood in this tedious, inconsequential B picture. The sun doesn't rise nearly fast enough.