Review of 30 Days of Night (2007) by Jv T — 04 Feb 2011

The premise here of vampires running amok in Alaska during the one month in the year where there's no daylight shows a lot of promise. And parts of this movie do deliver that to horrific effect; these vampires are like humanoid sharks (all coal black eyes, pale white and sleek, pointed features), predators that go on an all out killing spree because their aversion to sunlight is temporarily removed.

There's this one POV shot from an angle that shows the scope of the massacre and it gave me chills. Director David Slade does a good job of building up the gore and the tension (the scene where the survivors deal with a young vampire girl froze my blood). The few action scenes shown are violently and frantically paced. Hartnett and George are competent leads but Foster is the standout, he does creepiness real good. Huston as the lead vamp is a disappointment, spouting philosophical nonsense in subtitles as if that makes him more menacing. Dialogue isn't really a strong suit here.

Ultimately, what puts me off this movie is how much potential is wasted. Throughout the entire flick, there is no time check to establish how long the survivors have been hiding. A simple text indicating how many days has passed would have made the horror of the situation more palpable and make the premise stand out more compared to other vampire flicks. It shouldn't be called 30 Days of Night for nothing.

The writers assume that the audience knows all there is to know about vampires and that they've read the graphic novel which the movie is based on. A little exposition about what makes these vampires different from their cinematic cousins would have helped. In the graphic novel, it's told that the vamps are weakened by extreme cold. Which helps to explain why the survivors choose to run through a blizzard unseen and untouched. This lack of detail creates relatively large plot holes and unexplained moves by the characters that appear to be stupid. Yes, I know dumb moves by characters are part and parcel of the horror genre but for a movie that's trying to rise above the rest of the pack, it ends up sticking to the conventions of its ilk.