30 days of night

So continues a little bit of my vampire interest writing. I’ve done a couple of I Am Legend look-sees (here and here) along with more mainstream jabbering (here for example). 

30 Days of Night was hailed as one of the darkest, goriest vampire flicks ever. Updating the blockbuster hyperbolic action of the Blade trilogy, it would usher in a return to the vampire-as-true-horror genre, rather than namby-pamby 'sexy' vampires with diamond skin and such. In the small town of Barrow, northernmost of American outposts in Alaska, a thirty-day night is just beginning, a period of darkness marked by the departure of nearly half the 1,500 inhabitants who flee to warmer, brighter climes. And into this one long night arrives a stranger (Ben Foster), and, of course, a whole bunch of very thirsty vampires.

The strained relationship between town sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George), who happens to find herself in Barrow just in time to miss the last flight clear, is established nicely enough. Early attempts at meaningful, emotive dialogue are pulled off just about. Night begins to fall. The first killings occur, and a sense of mystery infuses the air.

Unfortunately, that sense of mystery is not particularly engaging. The cinematic beauty of watching the sun set for the last time for an entire month, coupled with some rather nifty opening credits, is not enough to cancel out the fact that the opening drags, and ‘Day 1’ lasts almost half of the film. Once the survivors of the initial onslaught are boarded up in an attic hideout, it already seems inevitable that they will all die. The desperation, the hope and the excitement that might have been worked into fighting off a vampire siege is wholly removed. ‘Day 8’ adds little to the thrill, the next milestone we are given. Where did days 2 - 7  go? An old man, trying to break out, is carried off. Somehow the vampires, who have engineered this conquest, fail to understand that there might be other people hiding in the building. These master monsters, who've been clever enough to think of hitting up an entire town that's dark for a whole month fail really to follow through with their design.

How should one redeem such a piece? Can adding conversations between vampires, a line about how they had tired of hiding in the shadows, enhance the threat they pose? Not really. Instead, it makes the conquest of Barrow, tiny and insignificant as it portrayed to be, into some kind of battleground to protect all of America, and it doesn’t work. Heroism can be found anywhere. Why not make Eben the hero of Barrow, not of America, the world, as a whole? Why try to make this about the entire human race when the audience might want in fact to care about the people of Barrow instead. 

Rapidly descending into trite melodrama. Not dark enough to remain true vampire horror, or swiftly paced enough to add proper tension or expectation in the audience. Adding gore to a weakly carried out film doesn't rocket up into must-see lists, I'm afraid.

~~~

2007

Josh Hartnett, Melissa George

dir. David Slade