Not a great addition to the genre, but perhaps some memorable moments

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2007)

In what began as a good premise failed to live up to anything of the sort. 30 Days of Night is a not that a good addition to this genre and I feel that when making a contemporary vampire film any correlation to the original novels and ideals can be disregarded in favour of making the film more acceptable to current audiences via other tools, prime examples being "Blade", "Night Watch" and the ever popular "From Dusk Till Dawn"  30 Days of Night does this, but not intentionally  as although there is mention of sunlight, there is no mention of garlic, crucifixes or stakes etc and no real reason given for not mentioning them. It also lives up to many horror clichés, including the infuriating aspect of giving certain characters depth when their demise is so blatantly imminent, characters threatening the well-being of the others through panic, fleeing thus jeopardising others and reiterating the obvious.
The title draws the audience into a false sense of what to expect, as we do not witness 30 days of night as on several occasions the narrative leaps several days leaving the audience questioning the protagonists' endeavours over this time and in doing so fails to attract any real level of isolation. The feeling of isolation was far better tackled in John Carpenters "The Thing" (also set in cold, desperate conditions near the arctic circle), as was the subject of vampires in his film of the same name.
Evolving from music videos, director David Slade, (Hard Candy) does give us some nice shots and scenes with vampires leaping from rooftops and some well filmed bloodshed - the best of which being the birds-eye tracking shot of the village. It is a very revealing shot, as it not only depicts a sense of isolation and desperation, but also the horror and carnage being experienced by the townsfolk. In fact this and the facial makeup of the vampires were the two real highlights of the film for me. The ending is not, and will leave many people annoyed at its cheesiness.