30_days_of

30 Days of Night

U.S. Release Date: 10/19/07
Running Time 1:53
Rated: R (Violence, gore, profanity)

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Mark Boone Junior, Mark Rendall

Director: David Slade
Screenplay: Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie, and Brian Nelson, based on the comic by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith

Music: Brian Reitzell
Studio: Columbia Pictures

Many motion-pictures have come and gone in the vampire genre. Most are worn out with bloody fangs, silver stakes, deaths by sunlight, bats, garlic, human-to-vampire transformations, and ubiquitous Dracula references or appearances. The vast majority of these features include red liquid by the bucket and too many bullets to count.

30 Days of Night comes close to redefining this stale genre. The film presents the stereotypical set of vampires with a mature style suggestive of its graphic novel source. Unfortunately for viewers, the final ten minutes disappointingly dip back into convention.

Every year, Barrow, Alaska – a small town on the state’s northernmost edge – spends a full month in complete darkness. Before the final sunset, most of the townspeople migrate south to live with sun. Nevertheless, a handful of citizens remain behind to tough out the 30 days of continuous night.

Among this year’s handful is the town sheriff, Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George). When cell phones are found destroyed, dogs killed, and friends mutilated, it soon becomes apparent that a band of bloodthirsty vampires are out to kill each of the town’s inhabitants. Eben must lead the charge to save Barrow from total extinction.

The story’s setting is inherently reminiscent of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The air is cold; the action is intense; and, the characters are claustrophobic within their own community—frightened and entrapped by snow. Director David Slade invites a disquieting mood and ironically allows suspense to boil within a town implanted on the frozen tundra.

One thing is for sure, and that’s 30 Days of Night features some frightening depictions of vampires. Some might say that the bloodsuckers are a cross between the archetypal images of Dracula and Alec Baldwin’s metamorphosis in Beetlejuice. With their raptor-esque squeals, dilated pupils, and superhuman powers, these creatures of the night surely make for menacing villains.

Speaking of villains, future shining-star Ben Foster and seasoned vet Danny Huston depict daunting characters who scratch their way past your eyes and deep into your memory. Foster is outstanding and nearly unrecognizable as The Stranger, while Huston easily becomes a petrifying vampire that is both humanistic and bestial. Both Foster and Huston are worthy of applause for their exquisite acting.

On the other hand, Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, the film’s headliners, do a little more than sleepwalk through the film. George puts on the same face that she exhibits in The Amityville Horror (2005), while Hartnett is too young, handsome, and refined to play a rough town sheriff. Good thing the temperature can be an excuse for their cold interpretations of the comic book characters.

Acting aside, 30 Days of Night is an intense exercise in vampirism, but its ending comes quick, and somehow it’s hard to believe—despite the picture’s already fictitious plot. Even so, the film doesn’t stab itself in the heart with a silver stake. Regardless of its far-fetched whimper of an ending (that pushes a man’s sacrifice for love and his inability to live with regret and a broken heart), 30 Days is a decent white-knuckling horror/thriller and the better choice for a Halloween feature from the ’07 lineup. Although it isn’t a full course, 30 Days of Night satisfies the thirst for a sizeable vampire horror.