30 Days of Night

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster Directed by: David Slade Runtime: 113 min. Rated: R Release date: October 19, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
6 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 7.7 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 5 Funny . . . . . . . . 5.3

The Nerve Review

Color is important in horror. The play of sound versus silence, the balance of tension and frantic activity, even character are all informed by the palette. The antiseptic blues and greens of Saw and The Ring have replaced John Carpenter's stark blacks and whites in the past decade, but the stress and anxiety that those filters so effectively evoked are too familiar now. A movie that looks like it was filmed in a dirty fish tank just isn't that scary anymore. Enter David Slade and 30 Days of Night, about vampires invading Barrow, Alaska — one of the northernmost townships in the world, over three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Taking advantage of a month-long period of perpetual night in late winter, the movie attempts to do for vampires what 28 Days Later did for zombies: actually make them scary again. It doesn't quite hit this target, but Slade successfully bucks the blue/green trend with the rich natural color of his arctic setting. In the first twenty minutes of 30 Days, as Barrow shuts down for the month and the sun sets, the greys and whites of the snow and darkening sky are striking, particularly in an overhead shot of the town just after night has settled. Streetlamps and lit windows shine out of the black to make Barrow look like the nightmare the audience already knows it's going to become.

For a while, the movie survives on its strong atmosphere and imagery, but it stumbles by valuing the monsters more than the human story. When things first start to go bad for the people of Barrow, you only see fleeting glimpses of the vampires, and it's very effective. A scene where protagonist Sherriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife are driving away from the town and a black silhouette leaps on top of their moving truck is terrifying, because all the audience sees is something person-shaped pounding on the roof, not a fangy, hissing caricature. But eventually the fangy, hissing caricatures come out to play full time, mugging for the camera in fashionable suits as they have in every Blade and Underworld sequel for the past decade. [SPOILER WARNING] By the time Hartnett turns himself into a vampire to fight the other vampires, 30 Days has completely fallen apart. Still, Slade is a promising talent. He just needs his focus to equal his eye. — John Constantine

Your Reviews

This is not a review, so much as a comment on your review. Where is your spoiler warning? I read the comic book years ago, before I saw the movie (which I loved, if only for its combination of hellish screams and Josh Hartnett,) but what about people who haven't? Please put a warning up!