30 Days Of Night

Why do movies love vampires above other monsters? Is it because they’re cheap (rented teeth)? Because they’re sexy? Because they transgress? From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Anne Rice’s Lestat, vampires do something to movie goers and book lovers alike which isn’t nice, but – We Want It. Vampires are desirable. Even when vampire movies are camp or made in the 80s and starring a drug-bloated Keifer Sutherland (hands up fans of The Lost Boys), we’re suckers for their blood-sucking, their deathly pallor, and their sex as death (those fatal kisses). 30 Days of Night tells a story that’s morally reprehensible and needlessly cruel, but as a vampire movie, it’s glorious.

The story takes place in Alaska, the place where Americans go to forget. Barrow, Alaska (we are told) is the northern-most town in the 49th state, and every year, for 30 days each winter, the sun doesn’t rise and no planes are allowed to fly (this second part remains a mystery – doesn’t Barrow airport have lights on its runway?). Barrow’s sheriff is Josh Hartnett: a tall, squinty-eyed fella who looks like a poor man’s Harrison Ford. Josh is separated from Melissa George, but hoping for reconciliation. Good luck for him, she misses the last flight out. Bad luck for everyone, vampires are coming to town.

The vampires of 30 Days aren’t gentrified, Anne-Rice-type vampires. Nor are they the gun-totin’, leather-clad, Kate-Beckinsale-in-Underworldsort. These are more your feral, Near Dark-style vampires – pack animals, vicious (we watch them prowling rooftops and jeering at their prey). These are vampires with long dirty fingernails and yellowing piranha-teeth. They dress like a debauched party has just ended and they’re out in search of fresh kicks. There’s an unhinged quality about them, something lawless. Danny Huston, playing their leader, is brutal and dead-at-heart, more Scarface than Michael Corleone. It’s a great, near-silent performance that bespeaks power and depravity and no shred of remorse. This is Genghis Khan by way of Studio 54.

Josh Hartnett, playing the hero, faces two impossible tasks. One, he’s got to take on twenty vampires. Two, he’s got to show us heart to match Huston’s heartlessness. He succeeds at neither. Not that Hartnett is terrible. He’s better than he usually is (this isn’t a balsa wood-reanimated performance like The Black Dahlia or Wicker Park). Hartnett just doesn’t have Huston’s reserve of talent. He’s 2000’s Harry Hamlin: tall and cute, but not – alas – a star. Melissa George is blond and holds a gun like she means it; but again, she isn’t dynamic or memorable beyond what her role requires. Playing the good guy in a vampire movie is a thankless task (like straight men in comedy), but it’s necessary, and Hartnett and George don’t shirk (bless ’em).

Director David Slade shoots 30 Days like 21 Grams, lending it an art-movie look where grainy cinematography is shorthand for Authenticity. Not that this is a cheap-looking movie, for this isn’t the film-school-grainy of countless shot-on-DV movies, but rather a rich, subtle palette that draws out texture and shade. The movie’s opening shot – of a man looking at a ship trapped in the ice floe – is like something Rembrandt would have painted if he’d done storyboards for The Thing.

If horror movies are like the drinks we regret then vampire movies are absinth. There is nothing we need or which nourishes us in the vampire story, and yet – we’re enraptured. Vampires are us stripped of morals, of conscience, of the quotidian and the need to –anything, except to lust. Anne Rice might have them waffle about God and try to pass for human, but the best vampires are those who enjoy being bad, not those who ask repentance. 30 Days of Night is a good vampire movie because it relishes blood – it’s cold, dark and brutal. When a frightened victim cries “Please God” and Danny Huston answers “No God”, it’s nihilism written in lightning.

I was really excited for 30 Days of Night. I had read most of the comic series, and the commercials made it look dark, creepy, and the atmosphere throughout the film looked very compelling and hopeless. The trailer got one thing right - this movie was hopeless, in a very bad way - but the rest of what 30 Days of Night was supposed to bring to the table was no where to be seen.

30 Days of Night is about two sheriffs in Barrow, Alaska, Eben and Stella, who must protect the town from vampires after the sun sets in Alaska for the last time until 30 days later. Does it sound like an interesting take on a genre of stale plots. Yes and no. I mean, these vampires are still your same old vampires, and their weaknesses are still the same. But it should be interesting that it's night every day, right? Right?

No. I watched this movie with my girlfriend when I came home from break (Hi Sarah!), and we both found the movie almost intolerably boring. The running time probably has an effect on the excitement. At almost 2 hours, you better have something interesting throughout the movie to keep the viewer watching in suspense. But there wasn't. I sat there looking at the clock through most of the movie, and then I even got up and switched on the ticker on the DVD player so I could see how much of the movie was left.

There is no suspense, or creepiness, for that matter. I wasn't scared in the least bit, or even really intrigued by anything other than a couple of beheadings. The movie did not do a good job of generating even the least bit of sense that we were in danger at every turn. Honestly, I couldn't have cared less for anyone in the film.

The script is just terrible. Shame, shame, shame. Every line was grating to me, it was that bad. Josh Hartnett definitely didn't shine in this film. The vampires' speech was ridiculous; first off, why couldn't they just talk in human speech, because they were humans before; and then, why did they always speak in amazingly stupid riddles? I don't know if there's an answer.

And the camera is so inconvenient at times. During some of the more action-packed sequences, when I really wanted to see what happens because boredom had already set in before that, the camera is wavering all over the place like one of my home videos I shot when I was 10. I want to see this stuff, because it's the only entertaining thing in the movie! But you don't. Your eyes are crossing and bouncing around so much you're liable to get seasick.

The only redeeming quality that the film had for me was the fact that the beheading in the movie was really cool, where Eben gets taking swipes at the head with cracking sounds. It shows how hard it is to actually cut off a head. Then, they go and do it again in another scene, which detracted to the first one because of the repetition. There is such a thing as too much.

30 Days of Night was one of the biggest disappointments as a horror movie that I've seen in a long time. I would definitely never watch it again unless I had to, or if I was really, really, really, really bored. Let me stress this fact - if you're bored before you watch the movie, you may get even bored-er, so watch at your own risk. The effects are sometimes bloody, but you'll have probably have torn your hair out way before you get to them.

Last updated: 2009-08-19 04:41:40 by Ryneb

In a decade of awful horror movies, one film tries to be better than the rest. 30 Days of Night attempts to revive the horror genre by releasing a new breed of vampires to the world. Based on the graphic novel, the story takes place in the northernmost town in Alaska, where one month out of the year, the sun does not rise. This particular year, right before this stretch of darkness occurs, a stranger wanders into town seemingly from thin air. After startling a local, he is brought to the police station by the town sheriff, played by Josh Hartnett. Once there, the creepy man begins warning the sheriff that "something's coming". In this case, the "something's" are a pack of vicious vampires who are obviously out for that beautiful elixir that they just cannot resist. As the sun goes down, townspeople begin to be picked off one by one. Eventually, a small group of people meet and decide to ride out the attack together. They must then fight for their lives as they try to find food to last the month, or become food in the process.

According to the commercial, 30 Days of Night was going to "reinvent the vampire movie". The people who came up with that tag line should immediately be fired for flat out lying to America. In truth, this movie does nothing differently than any vampire movie I've ever seen. In a movie like 28 Days Later, zombies were redefined as being able to run just as fast as humans, thus rendering hope lost. But the vampires in this film are much the same as all vampires: quick, agile, violent, and vulnerable to sunlight. The only noticeable difference was the shape of some of their heads. But I'm not sure that's what they meant. Put simply, I've seen all of this before.

30 Days of Night is chock full of the cliches we have all become accustomed to; The band of survivors crowding in one building talking of loved ones and crying about futures that may not come; Somebody saying "It's not safe here, we have to move"; People being killed one by one as they do the aforementioned moving. It seems as though this movie follows the motions of all the films it supposedly is trying to be better than.

It is impossible to rate the acting in this film, as it is after all a modern day horror film. The only reason such a well known actor as Josh Hartnett was cast was probably to attract fans of his to seeing it. Ben Foster plays the mysterious stranger, and pretty much nails the ability to look and speak menacingly. Because of this, he becomes the only character that anybody really wants to see more of. Unfortunately, the stranger has only 15 minutes of screen time, leaving me one extremely pissed off movie-goer.

Overall, 30 Days of Night is a repetition of any other movie of its kind, using the same formula that's been around for years now. The ending lacks substance, and definetly leaves you feeling cheated out of your time. And when it's all said and done, it's basically just watching people get killed in nasty ways. My rating (3/10)