30 Days of Night

I thought this movie was pretty good. Granted, there were a few things that just didn't make much sense to me and other areas seemed flawed. But, when I went to see this at the theater I was expecting blood, I was expecting action and I was expecting something totally different to your old fashion vampire movies. And it definitely delivered on that. If you are looking for something to watch while you curl up with your woman on a couch late at night and have her hiding her face in your arm while you are admiring the cool action and death scenes then check this out.

I never heard of "30 Days of Night" until the movie was released. The concept of a remote Alaskan town under siege by vampires during the time when the sun doesn't show for 30 days struck me as fresh and interesting. The movie did not disappoint. Adding to the brilliance of the concept is that the vampires are portrayed as being anything but romantic creatures who woo their victims into submission. Romance, and religion, have been removed from the vampire equation, which adds to the appeal of the film's story. The vampires are coldly intelligent predators, whose idea of foreplay is to take someone's throat out. Danny Huston's portrayal of the leader of the vampire pack is amazing, proving you don't need pounds of prosthetics and hours of CG to provide a fright. Mr. Huston, and his scary band of vampires, deserve top billing.

Barrow, the hapless town targeted by the vampires, is cut off from the rest of world due to the weather, and the sabotage of the vampires' advance scout. Town residents are taken out in scenes of all out carnage. A memorable sequence is a continuous overhead shot that moves through one of the town's streets, showing the vampires dragging people from their homes, and the folks of Barrow trying to fight off the vampires. The scene slams home how the vampires use surprise to subdue and slaughter the town folks, dropping the already low human population of Barrow (the majority of the town's residents regularly leave the town during the month of darkness, unable to cope with not having any sunlight for so long) down to a few survivors trying to hide. After the initial blood bath, the movie moves into the suspense factor, as the remaining humans try to avoid the vampires until the sun rises again, and the vampires use their wiles to hunt down the remaining humans. Very scary. Take the movie's R rating seriously.

There are some holes in the plot - the biggest being the ending. I kept questioning what, exactly, the vampires were eating, as they left prodigious quantities of their victim's blood lying around, as well as their victims headless corpses. Still, I had such a good time viewing this movie, that I could suspend my questions and enjoy the movie. I am not usually a fan of horror films, but I am a fan of this horror film.

I say that because their is no romance like anne rice or like other vampire movies trying to pass off being human. these do none of the above.

`30 Days of Night' starts with an admirable idea: How about a vampire story in Northern Alaska during the dead of winter when there is no sunlight for about a month? There's so much you can do with cold and darkness to make a chilling horror adventure, and there have been many movies done recently in this vein, (including `Wind Chill' and `First Snow'). Based on screenwriter Steve Niles' co-authored comic series, the film descends into the darkness, but just like the protagonists who fight the villains off from their Barrow, AK town, they sometimes lose opportunities to be effective.

The story starts just before the winter solstice. In ritual fashion the Barrow citizens see the last sunset they will witness for nearly thirty days. Included in that ritual is the sheriff, Eben (Josh Hartnett) and his separated wife, Stella (Melissa George) who face the demanding winter with routine resignation. Eben stays close to his teenage brother, Jake (Mark Rendall) and grandmother (Elizabeth McRae), while Stella misses a consequential flight back to Anchorage.

Soon after their last sunset, strange occurrences come upon their small town. Lights go out, power is extinguished, and a whole kennel of sled dogs (huskies) is brutally killed. After that more mishaps are presented, including a strange accident between Stella and a man driving heavy machinery. Startlingly, the shrieks of mysterious creatures show up on the scene and attack isolated people. Soon scattered victims are found with elaborate neck wounds at messy crime scenes. From there the sheriff gathers with some people as they lock themselves behind closed doors to wait out the ordeal and flee when they can to a generator plant. Without the respite of a sunrise to help them regroup, they have to resort to other methods once they've decided it is indeed vampires plaguing their town.

One of the great flaws of the film is its diminishing suspense. They give up the ghost early and often. Truly scary for the first 2/5 of the running time, we meet the hideous creatures as they gather together. The vampire parleys have them speaking in their native language, and, while, this works well in 'Star Wars' for fun, here it's almost laughable. Meant to explain their motivations, it doesn't tell us much and has the effect of merely showcasing bad dialogue and making their menace seem silly at times.

There are also other credibility gaps. At one point Eben has a chance to save his town and a woman who's put at risk from the whole throng of vampires. Why doesn't he try to do something to destroy them and save the whole town all at once? My best guess is that because the movie is only slightly more than half over, they have to have Sheriff Eben do something stupid, so we can reach an equally incredulous conclusion.

While all horror pictures shouldn't be the same, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to M. Night Shymalan's `Signs (Vista Series),' which used suspense expertly and only gave us glimpses of the perceived aliens until the end. I also thought of `Insomnia (Full Screen Edition),' a thriller, starring Robin Williams and Al Pacino, where they used sunshine and sleeplessness to better effect than they did with the Alaskan elements here. While I could see that editor, Art Jones, did many admirable things that we've seen in movies like '28 Weeks Later (Full-Screen Version),' his yeoman work only takes us so far. From the jolts of the first half hour, the movie turns from scary and suspenseful to a gruesome and pointless arcade.

good movie great intertainment i like the part that the group of people were trying to survive by a bunch of sick flesh eating animals, zombies, what ever you want to call them. The ending was good they got what they had coming. The main cop in the movie played a great roll sacraficed him self to save the rest of them. It was really interesting when the day light went out for thirty days, sneaking about trying to survive !