30 Days of Night (2007)

Overall rating from 1 to 100: 74

O Masterpiece (100)
O Excellent (75-99)
X Rental (60-74)
O OK (50-59)
O Mediocrity (30-49)
O Avoid (1-29)

Review by Jason Pyles / November 16, 2007

Each winter in Barrow, Alaska, the town faces an annual inconvenience when it is buried beneath a blanket of darkness for 30 days. An island unto itself, Barrow is surrounded by 80 miles of wilderness that has no roads to speak of. Travelers fly in and out of the town through its small, private airport. And each year at about this time, most of Barrow’s inhabitants flee from the sunless month, which shrinks its population from about 563 down to 152 people.

The 30-day nighttime fast approaches. And when a mysterious saboteur wreaks havoc upon the city’s various means of communication and transportation, we have the perfect setup for stranded townspeople to be terrorized, much like Stephen King’s “Storm of the Century” (1999). Indeed, “30 Days of Night” owes a lot to that film, as well as “28 Days (and Weeks) Later” (2002 and 2007). Basically, that’s the simple beauty of the plot: A small town’s residents are hunted down by a pack of vampires who have free reign during a month’s worth of ‘round-the-clock darkness.

The Good: “30 Days of Night” does a lot of things right. First of all, its nerve-racking suspense is quite engaging. The vampires speak in some kind of bizarre tongue, a veritable vampire language, so subtitles accompany their dialogue.

There are several shots of huge patches of bloodstained snow, including the movie’s money shot where the camera travels overhead looking down upon the carnage of the attack in progress. (Some will call this blasphemy, but this shot, though much simpler, begins to approach the excellence of the beginning of Orson Welles’ 1958 film noir, “Touch of Evil.”)

The movie’s jumpy, “Gotcha!” scares are inventive, and therefore, refreshing. The vampires themselves are fast, vigorous, messy maulers, much like the zombies of “28 Days Later.” They have creepy fingernails and even creepier facial structures. And, of course, actor Ben Foster (“3:10 to Yuma”) may end up being the new Klaus Kinski; he is unmistakably menacing, and he’s not even a vampire.

The Bad: Why, oh why, must horror films try to fit in a love story in need of repair? Lame. The “leader” of vamps is a terrific casting blunder: He looks like a stockbroker, not a monster mentor.

We watch the 30 days tick away, leaving long periods of time where those in hiding are unmolested and the vampires are inexplicably not breaking down doors to retrieve them. Also, the humans keep making deadly moves from hideout to hideout, taking truly unnecessary, unbelievable risks.

And even though the vampires speak in an eerie language, the subtitled translation totally deflates its novelty, with lines like “There is no escape,” and snappy little limericks (not really limericks, I just wanted to use that word) that want so badly to be wise and profound but fail. And speaking of dialogue, why is it that anytime there’s a child monster, it has to say stupid kiddy lines, like, “I’m done playing with him, now”? Ugh.

The Ugly: We see gruesome violence done to a child; and no, it doesn’t make it OK that she’s a little vampiress. I simply think we should choose to refrain (in almost every circumstance) from depicting violence toward children. And in similarly related tastelessness, the vamps stand in a circle and beat a young girl, a scene that literally made me angry with the filmmakers. Needless and very ugly, indeed.

Incidental, spoiler-free side note: Many have complained over this movie’s ending, but I was satisfied. It ends the way it has to. There is no other way. (Don’t worry, you will not guess how it ends from this side note.)

The Verdict: “30 Days of Night” is an effective thriller and a decent horror flick. It’s definitely more suspenseful than it is scary; but even so, this is a good rental choice if you’re in the mood for monsters and you aren’t too squeamish.

Directed by David Slade
Josh Hartnett / Melissa George / Ben Foster
113 min. Horror / Thriller
MPPA: R (for strong horror violence and language)

Copyright 2007. 217