So I checked in to Hulu to watch 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails, previously mentioned here. Instead of being a full TV miniseries, it was actually a collection of mini-eps, 3 to 5 minutes in length, that were originally posted on a Web site. It was something about a frenetic weirdo wearing a knit hat, despite the fact that he was in New Orleans, trying to pay back money he didn’t have and bring information to his friend who communicated online with someone who was a prostitute, and his girlfriend was tweaking out from lack of drugs, and some vampire researcher’s office got completely trashed, and, oh yeah, somehow we managed to wedge about 2 gruesome demises and 3 vampire sightings in per ep.
So, to recap, there was entirely too much plot, running around pointlessly, jump-cutting, cross-twitching and camera jerking, not to mention the fact that everyone screamed like whistling tea kettles, which was most annoying. I think the vampires were killing people just so they would shut up. There was a pretty awesome scene around mini-ep 3, in which Frenetic Weirdo and Tweaker Girl were hiding in a closet, watching through the slats as the vampire slowly lurked toward them. The soundtrack finally shut up for a moment during this brief interlude so that we could hear F.W. and T.G. whimpering and panting and thereby highlighting their vulnerable mortality and the fact that they weren’t hiding very well from something with a supernatural sense of smell and hearing. But, then, of course, the moment was broken, and the vampire attacked, and red Kool-Aid started flying everywhere.
I think that the miniseries was supposed to be scary and shocking — or at the very least startling — but it was pretty funny, from the moment F.W. accosts a police officer, flailing wildly and blithering, “We intercepted a message from them on the Internet!” Yeah, like that’s really gonna enhance your credibility, you blood-slathered, mouth-breathing slob. It was also funny was some drug dealer gave F.W. a swirlie…and when his friend the computer nerd drew his obligatory Sword of Repressed LARPing Computer Nerds to defend himself, but failed…and also when C.N. turned into a vampire and his intestines fell out as he lurched toward F.W. and T.G.
2,475 gallons of red food coloring bravely sacrificed themselves for this series. Let us have a moment of silence for them. They shall gush no more forever. They have gone to the Big Fake Blood Packet in the sky.
On the plus side, this is EXACTLY the sort of thing Pippilotta loves to watch. I can picture her hunched over the monitor avidly. She alternates between flinching away in disgust whenever the red Kool-Aid goes flying and then looking through her fingers and yelling advice to the characters on the screen. [“NO YOU MORON DON’T GO NEAR HER SHE’S A FREAKIN’ VAMPIRE AND SHE’LL TRY TO RIP YOUR THROAT OUT! Why are people in horror movies so damned stupid?? By the way, that’s NOT what a gushing carotid artery looks like! Who ARE your SFX consultants anyway?”]
P.S. I think I spent longer writing this blistering review than I did actually watching the mini-eps.