There are those who liked “The Grudge” and those who hold a deep love of “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween.” If you liked these movies or even more embarrassingly, their sequels, then you will like “30 Days of Night.” If you didn’t, then don’t watch it.
This isn’t to say the movie is bad. Five minutes don’t pass without a jump or fright, and the concept is pure genius. But a movie like this takes a certain love of B-movie horror films, and without it I’d imagine it’s unbearable.
The movie has a pretty good foundation for being terrifying. It’s based off an obscure graphic novel (comic book is so pre-“Sin City”) about vampires that terrorize an Alaskan town. The premise is that every year the town of Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States, suffers through 30 days without sunlight. The areas above the Arctic Circle and their odd daylight patterns may be a fact that we’re all aware of, but it’s rarely thought of as frightening. Why it never occurred to anyone that 30 days of night would be terrifying is bizarre.
That’s why the concept of the movie works so well. It’s Dracula but without the comfort of dawn only hours away. Instead, there is a month before the vampires lose the upper-hand.
Unfortunately the movie pretty much wastes this genius premise from the get-go. The movie switches from a full sunny day to miserable, endless darkness the next day with no transition. In real life this process takes months, as most people who took Astronomy 121 could tell you. At this point, the viewer knows they’re not in for an art house film. If the filmmakers could miss this key point, what else could they miss?
The answer: a lot. At the beginning we’re led to believe that one person managed to steal and destroy every single cell phone in the entire town. Does anyone ever even leave their cell phone outside their pocket anymore? How did this guy do it? And toward the end a central bad guy reappears in a scene directly after his grisly death.
More importantly, the viewer is left constantly wondering why the characters are doing what they are doing. This isn’t a slasher flick where you yell at the screen “Don’t run up the stairs!” This is more like a slasher flick where the central character runs willfully into the knife rather than making the killer waste the effort. The central characters seem to have a powerful death wish throughout the film.
Yet as I said, there are things to love about this movie. The filmmakers have successfully brought us an alternate version of the vampire. They use the old school vampire, with his disgusting teeth and slobbery habits and gave him a “28 Days Later” upgrade. No more handsome and tortured souls who bewitch you to death. These vampires are here to jump on top of buildings and use their super strength to rip your throat out.
Josh Hartnett and the other actors also do a good job acting and becoming progressively uglier as the month rolls on. One tends to wonder what Josh Hartnett is doing in this movie. Was he running low on cash?
B-movie fans should go immediately. You’ll enjoy yourself. But if you’re nice, you won’t drag your friends with you.