Stupid, predictable, and really loud!

Rating: 4/10 (28 October 2007)

For those who say 30 Days of Night was a new and innovative vampire film, I have no idea why you'd think that. This movie has a pretty standard plot (really the same plot as Night of the Living Dead, except with vampires in Alaska) with boring characters and dialog, and with lots of violence.
For my negatives, I'll start with the direction. I was glad that it wasn't filmed with a shaky cam. However to make up for that, it had this style where almost every scene was a close up on an actor's face. After about ten minutes of nonstop closeups, it got very annoying. The acting was not bad, but it was always too dramatic. Either the characters wait several seconds to answer each others questions, or the characters have close ups on their mouths to emphasize the drama of their lines. Again, it's an annoying technique. The characters were either cool calm, or they were a nervous wreck, there was never an in between with this one. Also, it was pretty annoying the scare tactics used in the film. The vampires run quickly past the camera and are loud then to scare the audience. But when they're coming up on people away from the camera, they're quiet (with the exception of their loud, extremely annoying vampire cries). These are the small things that bothered me.
The movie itself was a really grueling thing to watch. The plot of the film is a creepy stranger comes into an Alaskan town. He's picked up by the local police and tells them somethings coming. Of course, he is correct, and vampires come into town, during the month of complete darkness. A small group of survivors (led by Josh Hartnett) find ways to hide out and avoid the vampires for 30 days. The plan of the vampires to eat a town in 30 days of darkness sounds like a great plan, except, apparently, they didn't think that this town only has few people, and half of them, they turn into vampires. So how does this group of several vampires (who turns into more vampires later) survive 30 days off of these few people...who knows? But they do. Why do some people turn into vampires in a matter of seconds, and some it takes days? Who knows. How did these creatures keep the blood on their faces in the exact same areas throughout the film? Who knows. And there were many more inconsistencies throughout.
Aside from these problems, and the bad special effects, this had some good qualities. Some of the action scenes were interestingly shot, and even though there is no real reason to, the characters become somewhat likable. At times it feels like it might pick up, but unfortunately,, it doesn't.
Overall, this was a typically average vampire film that wasn't very scary at all.
My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 107 mins. R for violence.