Laugh all you want at the leaked recording of Christian Bale freaking out at cinematographer Shane Hurlbutt on the set of Terminator: Salvation – Bale is an intense man. During the interview, he barely smiled, staring at the table or into his hands, barely masking disdain for the whole press junket process and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

But as this year’s glossy but empty 300 showed us, great visuals do not a movie make. And while 30 Days of Night looks great (as great on screen as in comic), it needed a better story and better characters to make it a great movie.

Humans are herd animals. We’ve always lived together — in groups of only a couple of hundred in our prehistoric days right up to tens of millions today. But few places are more fertile for movie lore than the small town.