Horror is a natural genre for online video. The dialogue is mostly pointless (meaning money doesn’t have to be spent on top-quality actors or writers), you don’t need more than four minutes to show a monster tearing someone’s guts outs, and – since the audience is already primed for blood at any turn – you can make a cliffhanger out of nearly any scene. These are all points that Comcast’s FEARnet has exploited to great effect with 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust, the Ben Ketai-directed sequel to Sam Raimi‘s Blood Trails.
For those that haven’t been following the 30 Days of Night universe, basically, vampires are invading America.
In Blood Trails they cut through a large swath of New Orleans’ techie/junkie community in an online series; in Columbia Pictures’ 30 Days of Night they terrorized Barrow, Alaska on the big screen taking Josh Hartnett from this mortal coil. And now, three weeks in 30 Days-time after the Barrow incident, the vampires are back on the Web and looking for fresh blood in New Orleans.
Horror fans won’t be disappointed by this mini-series that debuted last month. Dust to Dust has got it all – great production values, intriguing characters, sexy scenes sans outerwear, and a storyline that doesn’t quit.
The first victim is prison nurse Sara Maguire, played by Mimi Michaels, who got undead as she attempted to transport paranormal investigator/bounty hunter George, – the show’s star, who’s locked up for beheading his girlfriend-turned-vampire – to a different prison. Sara’s not your average vampire, though. Sure, she munches on chihuahuas like they’re corn-on-the-cob, but she knows what she’s become and she tries to keep her vampiric ambitions at bay around humans.
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By Episode 4, George has escaped after a vampire fiasco at the prison, met up with Sara’s brother/just-retired cop Nick, while Sara engages in some gory/hot vampire-on-girl-dressed-only-in-bra-and-daisy-dukes action. And a vampire who kind of looks like Liberace has blazed through brutalizing anyone in his path.
With plot twists like this, FEARnet will keep its audience coming back for more.
