Long and cliché'

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2007)

I'm not sure what I expected, but this definitely wasn't it. Filled with both visual and verbal clichés, this film dropped the ball in many areas.
I do understand that most people go to see horror movies for the action (it had action) and the blood (there was plenty of that), but there should also be a story. 30 Days of Night made no attempt to engage the audience by providing sufficient backstory on the tight group of townspeople who were the center of the storyline.
The movie leaps from Day 1 to Day 7 to Day 18 to Day 27, with seemingly no change in anything, yet the film seems to drag. It would have been better, cut down to about an hour and a half.
On the plus side, the vampires were more rugged, physically powerful and far more agile than those in most other movies of its genre - these guys certainly were nothing like the suave Count Dracula portrayed by Bela Lugosi. Their leader spoke a foreign language (subtitled in English) that sounded more like Klingon than any earthly language.
Perhaps my view of the movie was based on more than five decades of watching various horror films of all types. The younger moviegoer whose viewing is unaffected by years of other films may find it fun.
The ending was touching in its way, and as has been noted before, there were some spectacular outdoor shots.