30 Days of Night (C- or 1.5/4 stars)
After the sleepy town of Barrow, Alaska descends into darkness for 30 days, it is attacked & overrun by a band of bloodthirsty vampires. In the winter, the sun sinks below the horizon & refuses to return for 1 full month. With light fading, most inhabitants run to grab the last flight(s) out of town. For those who remain, including Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett) & his estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George), it will be an uphill battle to keep the savage vampires from killing the rest of the townsfolk. The premise of '30 Days of Night' (directed by David Slade) is clever. The make-up & production values is better than expected. And the depiction of the vampires as cunning creatures is a welcome. But the pacing of the film is off. And the 'horror' becomes comical; not terrifying, at all.
When a creepy, mysterious stranger enters the town (the always interesting Ben Foster) uttering bizarre comments about approaching outsiders, Eben surmises that things are going to go awry quickly. Some sled dogs are slashed to death, some people have left their 'posts' & gone missing, the electricity is cut, & all communication systems go down. Before long, the shrieking vampires (led by Danny Huston) are wreaking havoc, leaving the town in a bloody destruction. The most important thing (for Eben) is to keep the small amount of survivors hidden until the sunlight brings their salvation.
Of course, a ton of gore graces the screen. But it isn't the kind that lingers for us to gaze & freak-out at. The actual filming of the gore (slashed throats, beheadings, razor-sharp teeth that shred necks) is fairly artistic for a film of this ilk. And I also quite enjoyed an overhead sequence which highlights the vampires as they run down their prey across the town's snow white canvas. The film has its' moments. I liked the cold, eerie setting (though it's actually filmed in New Zealand, of course). I also enjoyed the main vampire. Danny Huston has that kind of blank face; one that's open to potential-evil.
But this film fails because I was chuckling more than grimacing. Because this movie chooses to focus on the 1-dimensional human beings (the bland, pretty-boy sheriff, his boring wife, & some brainless, un-rootable townspeople) and NOT the evocative, gothic, bloodstained vampires who are struggling to maintain their lineage ... I feel the film made a very wrong decision. The vampires speak in a sort of ancient Eastern European dialect, murmuring in cryptic rhymes & riddles; I wanted more of them! I could have cared less about these particular humans and their strife. The film starts out fun, but then disintegrates. As usual, the humans start making poor decisions (why run from a place where the vampires can't reach you?). '30 Days of Night' becomes generic, & the ending is just horrible.
When a creepy, mysterious stranger enters the town (the always interesting Ben Foster) uttering bizarre comments about approaching outsiders, Eben surmises that things are going to go awry quickly. Some sled dogs are slashed to death, some people have left their 'posts' & gone missing, the electricity is cut, & all communication systems go down. Before long, the shrieking vampires (led by Danny Huston) are wreaking havoc, leaving the town in a bloody destruction. The most important thing (for Eben) is to keep the small amount of survivors hidden until the sunlight brings their salvation.
Of course, a ton of gore graces the screen. But it isn't the kind that lingers for us to gaze & freak-out at. The actual filming of the gore (slashed throats, beheadings, razor-sharp teeth that shred necks) is fairly artistic for a film of this ilk. And I also quite enjoyed an overhead sequence which highlights the vampires as they run down their prey across the town's snow white canvas. The film has its' moments. I liked the cold, eerie setting (though it's actually filmed in New Zealand, of course). I also enjoyed the main vampire. Danny Huston has that kind of blank face; one that's open to potential-evil.
But this film fails because I was chuckling more than grimacing. Because this movie chooses to focus on the 1-dimensional human beings (the bland, pretty-boy sheriff, his boring wife, & some brainless, un-rootable townspeople) and NOT the evocative, gothic, bloodstained vampires who are struggling to maintain their lineage ... I feel the film made a very wrong decision. The vampires speak in a sort of ancient Eastern European dialect, murmuring in cryptic rhymes & riddles; I wanted more of them! I could have cared less about these particular humans and their strife. The film starts out fun, but then disintegrates. As usual, the humans start making poor decisions (why run from a place where the vampires can't reach you?). '30 Days of Night' becomes generic, & the ending is just horrible.