30 Days of Night

By: themovielord
Date: Sunday, October 21, 2007

In an Alaskan town where the sun doesn’t rise for thirty days, a group of survivors must fend off an onslaught of blood thirsty vampires.

I read the comic, ‘30 Days of Night’ and thoroughly enjoyed it. While reading it, I thought it would make a great movie. It felt like a movie. It moved like a movie, yes a comic that actually moved. When the movie was announced I thought it was only to perfect to make the leap from comic to screen. Hoping that they wouldn’t Hollywoodize (cough, bastardize) the ending, I looked forward to the film. Sam Raimi was on board so things looked up. Sitting in the theater and watching the panels of the comic spring to life were great. If only the scares and thrills would have been there too, I probably would have loved, not liked, this film.

Immediately Hollywood (a term I am using for whoever made this decision) changed the dynamic of Eben (Josh Hartnett) and Stella (Melissa George) from a happily married couple to an estranged one. Why? Did this create drama? Tension? An interesting back story to these two people? Hello, there is enough of that in the surviving the thirty days and vampires. It hit me instantly as cliché’ and I had to make the decision to put the wall up or go with it. I went with it but, through out the course of the film these small moments that dealt with their past seemed trivial. There love story is what made the comic book and makes the ending so good (as well as the sequel). What bothered me even more was Eben’s first confrontation with the Stranger (Ben Foster) it was identical to the book, but this estranged lovers back story should have changed all that and it didn’t. Harnett and George play off each other well enough to sell it to the audience that there is something going on between them however, it really isn’t played out long enough to carry any real weight.

The whole film doesn’t really feel like we are there for thirty days. Sure, we see some hair growth, some craziness, and some grunginess to our survivors, but time seems to blow by without any real suspense or fear building up. In films like the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (either one) or ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (again either one) you can feel time passing; that things are getting bleaker as people try to survive and make the best of it by holding onto their humanity. In ’30 Days of Night’ the days seem to go by pretty quick, so the elements (the cold and snow) and time (sitting and waiting) never have the chance to become the “other” element of danger outside of the Vampires. The lack of these two additional tensions make this film about blood sucking thinking animals just a poor mans, “fight to the last”, zombie film; instead of the dark and twisted Vampire tale the comic had been.

Technically, there is great cinematography by Jo Willems that capture chaos, brutality, and cunningness of these Vampires. The makeup by Anita Aggrey and her army of makeup technicians did a superb job at updating these Vampires and really making what Steve Niles had on the page come to life. There are several instances where the comic and the film are identical (much like ‘Sin City’).

As horror films go there are a few moments that do stand out. There is a scene where a child vampire is feeding on a victim and the terror feels real as Mark Rendall deals with what to do both emotionally and physically. Nathaniel Lees has an incredible scene in which he reveals the truth to his back story (which is only touched upon earlier in the film) and how he cannot simply live forever because that would be the real hell. His humanity is slowly being stripped away and it is an honest scene from an underappreciated actor. Now the biggest horror in the whole film, as I saw it, was for Hartnett’s character Eben. Eben is the only person who must kill the people he knows to survive. Looking into their eyes and knowing their names, Hartnett has to do the unthinkable. That alone made for a few great scenes that stood above the rest; giving Hartnett the chance to rise above the ghost of ‘Hollywood Homicide” for at least a moment. His performance in this Vampire film may not be his best work, but he does a lot with a little and his scenes at the end of the film are just as good as they are in the comic.

’30 Days of Night’ was good, not great. It should have been a mini series like Stephen King’s ‘Salem Lot’ where the passing of time and the flushing out of characters could have been dealt with a on a grander scale. ’30 Days of Night’ does a lot for the Vampire genre in terms of changing their look, movements, and above all their fangs. As movies go it wasn’t anything to get excited about, but an unrated directors cut may just warrant a viewing.


Click here to read the staff review by Mania.