30 Days of Night
Aug 22nd, 2008 | By Rick | Category: Recent Cinema, Reviews
Danny Huston chews the scenery
30 Days of Night has an ingenious premise: vampires attack Barrow, Alaska during its annual period of darkness, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon for thirty days. That’s convenient, because in addition to being immortal, sunlight kills them as well. In fact, they’re pretty-much old school vampires, except for the fact that they have a whole mouthful of fangs and, as befitting these post-Christian times, they aren’t afraid of God.
The film is rather old-school as well, and while it’s nice to have the proceedings told from the human point of view for once — contra Blade, Underworld, and Nightwatch — its plot is altogether too familiar. As a matter of fact, it feels like it’s been cobbled together from several different sources. When the town Sheriff and his estranged wife (Josh Hartnett and Melissa George) lock up the vampires’ Renfro-like familiar in jail, it takes on a classic Western feel, with the bad guys amassing outside to rescue him. When they’re hiding in the attic, trying not to make a sound, it channels Hitchcock’s The Birds and Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In fact, it can be fairly said that there’s not an original bone in 30 Days’ body.
Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that; we vampire-movie lovers don’t see them for originality. We go to be immersed in a beloved genre, to be stroked by its tropes and tricks, and maybe to be scared, if only a little bit. But this is a review, not the paen of a fan, and what lifts a flick like this above it’s siblings is what it does with it’s genre mechanics. And what 30 Days does has been done a million times before.
There are pleasures to be had, however: the opening sequence is beautiful, and effectively establishes the film’s icy setting. Director David Slade (Hard Candy) keeps the action moving along: his slow-reveal of the vampires is particularly effective, building a healthy chill that has nothing to do with the snowy setting. The mood is aided and abetted by production designer Paul Austerberry’s gray Alaskan village: we can easily believe it’s endlessly caught in winter’s icy grip.
Once revealed, the vampires prove to be well-conceived: they screech over their prey like unholy birds, sporting permanently bloody muzzles and wonderfully claw-like hands. And who’d have thunk it, but Danny Huston makes a pretty good bloodsucker. As the head vampire, he’s got a calculated, other-worldly quality about him, an animalistic vibe that well-serves the nature of the beast. His movements are slow, deliberate, as if he has all the time in the world. Which, of course, he does: he is immortal, after all.
The rest of the acting is nothing to write home about. Hartnett turns in his usual bland performance — it’s bad when you don’t have the emotional heft to carry a vampire movie — and although George is lovely, she seems to have set out to match her co-star’s insipid turn. The only bright spot in the supporting cast — other than Huston — is Ben Foster as the Renfro stand-in. An amped-up version of Charlie Prince from 3:10 to Yuma, his evil hillbilly shtick is nevertheless fun to watch.
Even with all its flaws, 30 Days of Night is an entertaining enough horror film, and will satisfy all but the most cynical of horror fans. If like me you have a fondness for vampire movies, and a tolerance (and perhaps even love) for the clichés of the genre, you could do worse than spend a couple of hours with Huston and company.
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Coming off of Hard Candy, which I considered one of the best films of 2006 (curses on Oscar for not nominating Ellen Page!), I had high, high, high hopes for this one. David Slade and his screenwriter from HC, Brian Nelson, were reuniting, and on a vampire flick no less! I had even read the graphic novel, which was quite good (I know such things are apples and oranges, but it was better than the film).
Boy, how disappointed was I with the final product. The leaps in time and continuity were exceptionally poor in their handling. Really, a week has passed? And everyone’s in the exact same position there were in 7 days previous? You could tell they were just shoehorning the narrative into the titular “30 Days” when the entire film is plotted as if it took place in 24 hours.
If some of the other elements had worked better, that would be a minor gripe, but it seems all I have are minor gripes with this film, and then so many that they add up to one big Huge Gripe that is impossible to see around.
Yeah, you make a good point there … there was no feeling of time having passed at all, then we got the word that it had . . . Everything looked the same, all the time. Perhaps that was the problem with Austerberry’s production design: everything was supposed to be in perpetual darkness, and there wasn’t enough creativity to convey the passage of time nevertheless.
Actually, that’s not the way i is up there. Even during the 67 days — not thirty — that the sun doesn’t go above the horizon, there are daily periods of twilight, where the sun is just below the horizon, and you can see. And things don’t shut down, there are daily flights in and out of Barrow all year ’round.
Lies, Rick. All Hollywood feeds us is lies.
Yes. What a shock … a Hollywood film that doesn’t tell the truth. I am saddened and disillusioned.
When I saw this film the sound wasn’t working in the theatre and the first 15 minutes were silent. It was starting out to be a very cool zombie movie, stretching genre conventions, giving people something they might not be totally familiar with. Then they restarted the movie and it turned into the same old, bad-dialogue mainstream horror movie. Disappointing.
Yeah, bad dialog can be a pain, even in a vampire movie, a sub-genre that I really love.
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