“We should have come here ages ago,” one vampire says to
another in 30 Days of Night, and he has a point. Apparently,
vamps have been too busy swooning around for Anne Rice to, you know,
take a sec to really think about things: “Hey, so we’ve got that
allergy to the sun, right? So maybe we should go somewhere where the
sun isn’t an issue? Maybe instead of hanging out in, oh, I don’t know,
fucking SUNNYDALE, we should go to Barrow, Alaska, where the townsfolk
are delicious and the sun goes down for a month once a year, and we
could have a big fucking party?!”
Good for the vampire who finally thought of this idea, and bad for
the delectable residents of Barrow, who have their quaint lives rudely
interrupted when—on the eve of their month of darkness—all
their cell phones get stolen, their power goes out, and the guts get
yanked from the town’s helicopter. Cue sundown, and cue the vampire
equivalent of a drunken spring break.
Based on a fairly overrated graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben
Templesmith, the film version of 30 Days of Night is pretty
goddamn cool. Most of this is due to director David Slade, whose
pedophilic psychological thriller Hard Candy was one of 2005’s
most disturbing films. By loosely swiping the graphic novel’s plot,
Slade creates a gorgeously shot horror/survival flick that follows Eben
(Josh Hartnett), Barrow’s badass but overwhelmed sheriff, as he herds a
small band of endangered survivors through their vampire-infested town,
hoping to do nothing but stay alive for 30 days.
About those vampires: Screeching like banshee pterodactyls and
gleefully tearing through flesh, these vamps are opportunistic,
animalistic predators, slaughtering innocents and relishing the copious
sprays of blood that splatter Barrow’s once-pristine snow. Unrelenting,
the malicious vampires are led by the ancient Marlow (Danny Huston,
solid as usual), whose calm, cruel demeanor raises goosebumps as he
leads his gothy pals through Barrow’s body-strewn streets. (Also creepy
is Ben Foster as a tweaked-out vamp groupie; through rotted teeth and
frantic eyes, he ominously foretells Barrow’s violent doom before Eben
or anyone else can figure out what’s going on.)
Slade’s best with 30 Days of Night‘s earlier, quieter
moments, when the threat of brutal death hangs over his unsuspecting
characters’ heads. (Though that’s not to say Slade’s incapable of
handling the film’s more graphic moments—yeah, the sadistic
vampires inflict vicious gore upon Barrow’s defenseless townsfolk, but
as the situation grows increasingly dire, even our heroes end up
causing a fair amount of viscerally affecting bloodshed.) Working with
dark, painterly, and starkly beautiful landscapes, Slade’s a master of
understatement, and when 30 Days lets him maintain a constant
level of intense but subtle dread, it’s at its best.
Unfortunately, as things progress, they get uneven: There are a few
horror clichés, and the ending feels goofy and forced. But
overall, these elements can’t detract from the film’s strong
core—it’s a tense, scary story of a few survivors in a no-win
situation with foes who are nothing less than terrifying. But I’m just
saying those foes might’ve been scarier if they’d had the smarts to
think of going to Alaska earlier. Way to stay on top of things, Count
Chocula.
