30 Days of Night (2007)

**The following is a long form review that I originally wrote in 2010.**

A new-age, brilliant vampire movie that never got the acclaim it rightfully deserved.

_30 Days of Night_ is one of the few films I like that I can never understand why other people don’t. Though I do prefer other movies like _Revolver, Doomsday and Donnie Darko_ to it, with those I can always understand when people don’t see in them what I do. With _30 Days of Night_, if you don’t have a problem with gore, then you shouldn’t have a problem with the film. And yet I have personal friends as well as people I’ve heard from online who totally dig horror, gore, vampires etc. and yet don’t like _30 Days of Night_, which confuses me all to Hell, let me tell you.

Though I was mildly aggravated by the inconstancies in the number of vampires around, other than that I can find virtually nothing bad to say about _30 Days of Night_. Firstly you have Josh Hartnett (_The Faculty_) as Sheriff Eben, protagonist, secondly you have Danny Huston (_The Proposition_) as Marlow, leader of the vampires, who attack Alaska during the winter period of 30 days without sun (which in and of itself is an awesome concept, and thirdly there’s Ben Foster (_Pandorum_) as the vampire’s human lapdog, all of whom are personal favourites of mine. That’s not even mentioning the fact that Eben’s wife is played by Australian Melissa George (_Triangle_), who was born in my hometown, so even if she wasn’t a great actor, she’d get auto-points.

Basically every point in which _30 Days of Night_ differentiates from the comic it’s based on is an improvement to the story, which is (gasp, shock, horror) a mildly realistic Vampire film. God forbid. I love the vampires in this. Though they’re not quite as sexy and well-dressed as they are in _Underworld _or as demonic as they are in _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, they bring a totally new brutality to the vampire class. They wear what you’d expect late 30-ish people living in 2007 to wear, they’re stronger than the average human, but not impossibly so, they hunt in packs and give off bloodcurdling, atavistic shrieks (of which I give quite a good impression; sidenote) they’re unrelenting an animalistic but just as intelligent as a regular person, they’re quick, dark and deadly.

There’s no camp to be found here, not always a good thing, but in _30 Days of Night_, it is. I honestly cannot recommend this one enough, despite its intense gore and general panning, I implore you to at the very least give it a go, and decide for yourself.

Both the human survivors and the vampire invaders are there simply trying to stay alive, the vamps through their sadistic, systematic hunting of the local populace for their food-source, blood, and the people by trying to both hide, and fight back, but mostly the former. Ironically, it’s the “humanity” of the humans that causes every one of their downfalls, while they’re leached from above by a far superior race, who goes so far as to call humans a “plague” and invent a new language all for themselves, just so as to not have to speak the same filthy way we lower-beings do (and I mean, if your choice was between that and having to put up with American-English, wouldn’t you?).

86%

-_Gimly_

Barrow, Alaska. The most northern town in the United States, where for 30 days every year it is has no sunlight.

This is the perfect opportunity for a gang of merciless, & blood-thirsty vampires to feed on the remaining inhabitants of this small town, after most leave for the month of darkness.

As people are leaving, and others are making preparations for their time of hibernation, mysterious occurrences are uncovered; mobile phones stolen, and destroyed, an entire team of sled dogs butchered. The ground work for the impending doom of a malevolent force.

Once the killings and feedings begin there is no let up. I have watched my share of vampire films, and frankly this is definitely one of the best made, its stripped back, bare, and unromanticized. This group of vampires, led by the visceral Marlow (Houston) take no pity on the town of Barrow as they tear it apart looking for their prey, and using people as bait to lure hiding survivors out into the cold and snowed out streets of the isolated mining town.

The second half of the film becomes a tale of survival, as town Sheriff Eben Olemun (Hartnett) and his soon to be ex-wife Stella (George), lead a group of survivors who manage to hide themselves away by staying in an attic, scared and cold they realize that it is only a matter of time before they are discovered and killed.

Even though this is a film that does involve a fair amount of blood and gore, the film's real heart lies in the way it scares you with what it doesn't show in the lead up to the early killings, this for me is true horror, show me next to nothing, and build the most amount of tension, then deliver the shock, and you'll have me pissing my pants every time. There is also a fair amount of brutality shown, not only in how the vampires kill their prey, but also how they are dispensed by Eben and the others.

On an interesting note, this is a film based on a graphic novel written by Steve Niles, who co-wrote the screenplay to the film. Niles had actually pitched the original idea as a film some years before, but reworked it to graphic novel after being knocked back by several producers, it was then picked up afterwards by one of those producers to make this film we have now.

Eh, it's OK.

It's tense, it is bloody, it's not perfect
This is not a bad movie by any stretch, but the lack of ways of telling how the story and the world progresses (since it is all dark, all the time) makes it feel inevitable, or rushed, interchangeably. It is an odd sensation for a narrative.

The casting is good, and the direction solid, and it is certainly not a bad movie, but pacing-wise it feels... off somehow.