Written by Stuart Bettie (Collateral, Derailed)
Directed by David Slade (Hard Candy)
Starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Manu Bennett
IMDB Plot summary: After an Alaskan town is plunged into darkness for a month, it is attacked by a bloodthirsty gang of vampires.

I was intrigued by reports that 30 Days of Night expanded upon the vampire genre much like 28 Days Later did with the zombie genre. And it was Halloween, so what perfect movie to watch than 30 Days? Unfortunately, it didn’t quite deliver. What I was faced with was a story that not only didn’t update vampire movies, but did little to help my suspension of disbelief.

For starters, the premise is that vampires show up in this Alaskan town where the sun goes down for 30 days. To take advantage of the darkness, the vampires knock out all electricity to the town. For some bizarre reason, it doesn’t dawn on any of the survivors to simply get into a truck and high-tail to the next town, which is only 80 miles away (an hour’s drive).

The movie then pushes me to believe that the survivors go up to a week without being attacked by the vampires (multiple times). On-screen text tells you what day it is (”Day 1″, “Day 7″, etc.). So on Day 1, the town is attacked and we have our select group of survivors (led by Josh Hartnett and Melissa George, who play the sheriff and fire marshall, respectively) who hide in someone’s attic, which is fine. But the whole town only has like 80 houses… you expect me to believe the vampires, who KNOW there are people alive, won’t tear through all the homes looking for these people?? 30 Days gives one the impression that the vampires are completely lazy and only attack people if they happen to come across them while walking around.
Suspension of disbelief aside, the film does have decent action scenes, albeit short and sparse. In fact, the best one that comes to mind is near the beginning, when a silhouetted figure jumps on top of the sheriff’s truck and viciously pummels the top of it trying to get to the people inside. The intensity and cinematography of that scene worked great.

Another problem for me was the constant shrieking the vampires induced. Whenever the vampires were grouped, or if an individual vamp was about to attack, they would let out this horrible shriek, which could’ve actually done its job of frightening the audience if it hadn’t been for the overuse of it. When grouped, the vampires would shriek all together for what seemed like 30 seconds continuously. I found myself covering my ears because it was not only getting annoying but it was giving me a headache.

Overall, the movie was a disappointment. Few scares, low on the action and somewhat disjointed. I will give props for the ending, which was done well, but doesn’t save the rest of the movie.

Posted on November 1st, 2007 by Enrique
Filed under: Movie Reviews