No surprise here, 30 Days of Night is just about as good as it looks. While I still don’t quite understand why vampires just stand around hissing, and insist on an even more menacing hiss when they turn corners, this is a very well done film that executes its gore in a timely manner and in a way that, while still shocking, doesn’t take you out of the film or dominate it in any manner.
The premise is based around the isolated town of Barrow, Alaska in which they experience 30 straight days without sunlight every year. It is a time of year when most of the people that live there head south for the month and only a few remain behind. Unfortunately for those that stick around this year things get a bit hairy as a clan of vampires swoop into town to feast on some flesh.
Josh Hartnett plays Barrow’s Sheriff Eben and as the sun begins to set on the first day of 30 he continues to get calls as things go a bit haywire. Power begins to fail, the local helicopter is sabotaged and sled dogs are killed. Basically any chance of getting out of town or contacting outsiders is eliminated leaving Eben and a group of survivors, including his estranged wife Stella played by Melissa George. The exact reason the two are separated is never explicitly said but it is to be assumed that the pressures of Eben’s job combined with the harsh terrain was too much for Stella and she basically left him. Actually, if there is anything to point a finger at as being a problem with the film it just might be director David Slade’s attention to character development and the relationship between Eben and Stella, primarily because so much of it just isn’t needed.
30 Days of Night isn’t Slade’s first directorial outing though, this guy proved in 2005 that he knew what he was doing with the off-kilter pedophile flick Hard Candy that put little Ellen Page on the map as a name to keep an eye on. With this flick Slade tackles an often revisited genre in vampirism and with the fact that it stays dark for 30 straight days pretty much puts out survivors on the run in a no win situation and it really helps ratchet up the fright level. There is no concentration on weapons of garlic, silver or stakes through hearts, 30 Days of Night is just a matter of surviving until the sun comes up and it really does work.
Hartnett once again proves he is growing as an actor, and I really like his choice to star in a film of this nature. I think most younger actors trying to get into any kind of “serious” acting niche would shy away from a film like this, but I think his ability to pull off the role combined with the fact that it is a damn good movie should win him some points with audiences. Of course Melissa George is just as cute as ever, but as I said all the estranged wife stuff could have been left off the table as they just as easily could have been a husband and wife duo battling against vampires as they were a separated husband and wife duo battling vampires. Pretty much all the relationship trouble does is add on an extra 10-15 minutes.
Perhaps the best performance though is one of the shortest as Ben Foster plays a man known only as The Stranger. This is the man that helps the vampires by getting in early and cutting the town off from the outside. In 3:10 to Yuma I grew tired of Foster’s snarling attitude, but it fits right in with this one and it also isn’t popping up throughout the entire movie, which improves the tolerance level.
On a whole, Slade has a winner here, his second in a row. Even though Hard Candy didn’t make a ton of dough I consider that one a winner and as 30 Days of Night aims to take the top spot at the box-office this weekend I fully expect Slade to be attached to increasingly high-profile films over the course of the next year.
