Clever, Visually Inventive Horror Film

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2007)

I ordinarily might have skipped a film like this  there's enough lousy, third rate horror being pumped into the multiplexes these days. However, when I saw Slade's name under the directing credit, I thought differently and decided to give Thirty Days of Night a shot. Hard Candy, Slade's prior film, is a maverick work, unlike anything I've seen before. Certainly a shocker in its own right, Hard Candy is a marvelous original in the best, tough-minded pulp noir sense. Slade, working with but one set and not a pixel of CGI silliness, relied heavily on the acting strength of two terrifically well-cast principals to give Hard Candy the unique tension required to make it work - and it works. Slade not only got the performances he needed, he also demonstrated he can work effectively on a small scale, a sure sign of an exceptionally resourceful, inventive director. Thirty Days posed an altogether different challenge on a much larger scale; it's heavily atmospheric, with some big set pieces, and a big cast that battles through some frightening weather. Because of the perpetual "night" backdrop - a terrific idea, incidentally, for a vampire film - the visual palette is largely a grayish monochrome, set off with graphic touches of red and fiery oranges. This gives the film a moody, claustrophobic tone of growing dread that never falters and nor feels tedious to look at. If anything, it's hypnotic. 30 Days offers up some bravura visual moments - midway, there's a gorgeous, omniscient overhead tracking shot of the snowy town landscape stained with vampire carnage, and in the final sequence, the band of vampires stand clustered together watching as the town becomes engulfed in flames; both are brilliant bits of apocalyptic Gothic imagery worthy of a medieval Brueghel painting. While Hartnett, as the principal lead, provides the film's earnest, emotional core, his expressions filled with increasingly apprehensive flickers, quietly calculating the bleak prospect of survival he and the rapidly diminishing group of townspeople face, it's Danny Huston, as the lead vampire, who's over-the-top, chewing the blizzard-choked scenery and having a ball - or is it a snowball - doing it. (I'd hate to condemn as fine a character actor as Huston to type casting, but should Langella ever hang up the cape and fangs for good, Huston could easily pick them up.)Huston serves it up cold, meaty and raw here, and he's terrific to watch in what would otherwise be a throwaway role.
Incidentally, I should mention, the NYT did a genuine disservice with its review of "Thirty Days of Night." They sent in a third string reviewer who penned a smug, knee-jerk dismissal, and who clearly didn't know what he was looking at. Scott or Darghis should be sent in to re-review. Yes, Thirty Days is not perfect - there's some slipshod editing at points and Slade misses some great opportunities: the initial dialogue sequence between the Vampires - where we first get a good look at them and they are introduced as characters (not fast-moving homicidal blurs) is inserted haphazardly and without the proper dramatic build up, and Slade has a tendency to resort to chaotic, rapid cut editing in the action sequences, which merely translates as so much visual nonsense (The recent Bourne film suffered from this as well.) That may be fashionable in commercial action films these days, but Slade is smart enough to know better. All in all, though, Thirty Days is still a fine and worthy effort, and I think Slade has promise as an exceptional director and is somebody to watch in future.