Not enough gratuitous violence and no nudity

Rating: 6/10 (17 March 2008)

30 Days of Night is a standard vampires-attacking-a-remote-town movie with the gimmick of the far-northern Alaskan setting that provides the condition of the title. See, because vampires can't exist in direct sunlight - bet you didn't know that - so thirty consecutive days without sunlight would be like heaven to them. But that's about it as far as originality for this by-the-numbers gorefest, although the thick arched eyebrows of Josh Hartnett provide some measure of entertainment.
Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost point in the United States, and as previously noted in Insomnia, that area of the world is plunged into darkness for an entire month of every year. This is useful for the purposes of the story here, because it provides an deadline for the denouement - the vampires have to be out of there before the sun rises again. So our intrepid hero and his motley gang of scruffy, bundled-up citizens have a full month to deal with their vampire infestation.
Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) is the small-town Johnny Law whom everyone knows and likes, although he keeps his feelings close inside, as most squinty-eyed, jut-jawed heroes do. On the last day of actual sunlight, he's busy making sure everyone's doing okay and is prepared for the coming darkness. Then he runs into a weird man known only as The Stranger (Ben Foster) who obliquely warns everyone that "they" are coming that evening, when night falls. Who are they? Superstrong vampires, that's who, and don't think they'll stop until they consume every last drop of your blood, or turn you into one of them. (The last part didn't make a lot of sense to me - why create someone who'll just be competition for food?) No hero is complete without some love interest, so we get Stella (Melissa George), Eben's ex-wife. They're attempting a separation, but naturally Stella - through hopelessly contrived events - is unable to depart the town before the last plane leaves. (How come no flights can arrive or depart the airport when it's dark out? The town has electricity. Maybe they can, but the plot wouldn't permit it.) So she and Eben are stuck together, arguing over who gets to save the town. Seriously. On more than one occasion, Stella says, "I'm coming with you!" - no way she's gonna let him do it alone! - and most of the time Eben overrules her, but not always, because he's a Thoughtful Hero as well.
And to underscore Eben's emotional ties to the community, we're also introduced to his kid brother Jake, who looks to be young enough to be Eben's son. True to the genre, Jake desperately seeks the approval of his successful (to a point) older brother, and he tries to save the town as well. But no, he's not old enough, and Eben is responsible for him, and darned if some kid's gonna be the hero instead of him! So there's that.
The movie leans rather heavily on its setting to move the plot along; the special effects are rather ho-hum, and the acting is weak. And it's not that Hartnett can't act - he's actually developing into quite the fine thesp - but here he's just sort of drifting along like a windblown snowpile. George is cute and perky and occasionally serious, but she too isn't quite up to the task. And that's perfectly okay if your leading man is charismatic or if the special effects wow the audience so much that they don't notice the wooden performances, but here that's not the case. You wind up turning your eyes to the gore that you'd expect to see in a vampire movie, but the gore isn't even especially interesting or vicious. Some scenes are disturbing, though; turns out the only way to kill a vampire is by beheading it, as guns apparently have little effect on them. Which doesn't stop at least one suicidal maniac from shotgunning several bloodsuckers in order to give his fellow humans some cover.
Bottom line: Good, interesting concept, dreary execution. The movie's based on a series of graphic novels, and my assumption is that the novels themselves had more character and pizazz on the page than this movie does on the screen.