An effective Night

Rating: 7/10 (22 October 2007)

30 Days of Night has a premise that seems undeniably suited for a vampire movie: in Alaska resides a town named Barrow, the northernmost city of the United States. During winter, for 30 days, the sun never rises, bathing the city in a perpetual darkness during that period. Comic book creators Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith used this as the basis for their tale of a group of vampires that arrive in Barrow to feed for those 30 days on the unwitting, and largely trapped, populace of Barrow. Director David Slade has now brought the tale to the big screen, and while it is hardly a perfect horror film, it is a cut above many others in some time and provides the appropriate thrills for the audience.
As stated above, the setting is Barrow, beginning the day before the 30 day sunless cycle kicks off. Sheriff Eben (Josh Harnett) spends that last day investigating a number of unusual occurrences around the town: burned cell phones, murdered sled dogs, the only helicopter damaged beyond repair. As the sun sets, the town finds itself cut off from the rest of the world, and quickly under siege, as vampires have arrived at Barrow and begin feeding on the population, first just a few on the outskirts of town, but eventually moving en masse. Finding guns incapable of stopping the attackers, a group of survivors, led by Eben, and including his estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George) hole up in an attic and lay the groundwork for surviving the seemingly endless darkness.
30 Days of Night is not scary in a traditional sense. Even with some scenes of suspense, the film instead relies on the adrenaline rush of watching the survivors attempt to avoid detection by the undead, who utilize their stealth and the bait of other survivors to try to lure their prey into the open. The vampires are appropriately creepy, covered in blood from their victims, and attack with a ravenousness that vampires have typically lacked in previous screen appearances. These vampires are monsters, pure and simple, and that is reflected in several scenes where they confront their prey and fill the audience with unease since we are relatively certain the humans will not survive.
Despite the fact that 30 Days of Night is not a character-driven piece, Slade still manages to evoke a degree of feeling and sympathy for his human protagonists. The film deals in the sticky territory of who lives and who dies when faced against seemingly insurmountable odds, and also the questions of whether the choices made, even when the outcome seems obvious, are the right ones from a moral standpoint. 30 Days of Night is not some treatise on the human condition, it is still a horror thriller, but the fact that it takes the time to consider the issues is better than we usually get from a film of its genre.
Acting-wise, the cast is solid, if not amazing. Josh Hartnett is appropriately stolid as Sheriff Eben, but also manages to communicate his desire to try and keep those around him alive while his world seems to be unraveling at the same time. Danny Huston portrays the vampire leader, Marlow, and while he is not given anything in the way of English dialogue (the vampires speak in some subtitled foreign language), he conveys an appropriate sense of meance.
Visually, 30 Days of Night is effective, showing the dark world of Barrow, and director Slade and cinematographer Jo Willems do a good job of conveying dread by often populating the edges of the screen with the vampires lurking, ready to strike. The makeup effects that realize the vampires keeps them appropriately evil, but the work in this department is hardly groundbreaking.
30 Days of Night is no masterpiece, and Slade's previous effort, the disturbing Hard Candy, was a much better movie, but nonetheless, 30 Days of Night is effective and efficient, so if you like horror films, it's worth checking out.