Out of all the classic monsters, the vampire is typically the most intelligent and human-like. Watch any film with the gathering of monsters (Monster Squad is a good choice) and you’ll find the vampire leading the posse. When you take that away from the vampire and reduce them to growling animals, you’ll have something unique and possibly scarier, but you’re also risk turning them into zombies. From Dusk Till Dawn managed to walk that fine line, but 30 Days of Night falters in trying to become unique. When the snow settles and it’s all said and done, this is just a Night of the Living Dead clone with vampires… except the vampires act like zombies from the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Unfortunate, because 30 Days of Night is not just a catchy title, but also a brilliant premise. In the small town of Barrow, Alaska, there is a period where the sun sets for a whole month. Realizing the obvious, a pack of vampires attack the town just as the sun sets, hoping to enjoy 30 days of drinking blood without the annoying interruption of dawn. It’s up to Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett) to lead a group of survivors into hiding and sit it out.
This set-up sounds like the most creative setting for a vampire movie, until you realize how irrelevant it is in practice. Most vampire movies are set during the night anyway. Taking the sun out of the equation doesn’t matter much, because typically the heroes have to defeat the vampires without it. What would be interesting is to have a bunker-type situation where the characters get cabin fever or mad with hunger, having to endure the attack for a month. 30 Days of Night does none of that. They could’ve set the entire movie in one night and absolutely nothing would’ve changed. In fact, if it weren’t for randomly numbered title cards (“Day 7”) appearing several times throughout the movie, you’d think it all takes place in one night. Do the characters grow weaker from hunger? No. Is someone deprived of Vitamin D from the lack of sun? Nope. The biggest change we get is Josh Hartnett sporting a mustache at the end of the film. It’s frustrating when a film presents a great pitch and then does nothing with it.
As for what actually happens during that one or thirty nights... Almost nothing. As a survival story, it’s entertaining enough and there are a couple of cool gore moments, but nothing terribly creative. In fact, it follows Night of the Living Dead’s formula to a fault. You have the emotional toil of having to face a little girl turned into a vampire/zombie. You have the charge through dangerous waters to get to an important item. The difference, of course, is while Night of the Living Dead pits the survivors against one another in a riveting psychological torture, 30 Days of Night is just one siege after another. The survivors are faceless and boring, with no distinctive personalities until they’re about to die. When one survivor delivers a rendering monologue about how he longs to be with his dead wife and kid as he’s about to turn into a vampire, the prevailing question isn’t how tragic it is to have to kill him, but rather “Who the hell is this babbling fool, and why should I care?” It’s a wholly flat movie with gore being its sole window dressing.
Even Josh Hartnett’s sheriff is bland and unlikable, which is a fault of the shallow writing and Hartnett’s own systematic performance. The only character who is remotely anything other than dull is Ben Foster’s now-trademark wacky shtick as someone billed as The Stranger. Foster’s good at being that kooky removed character who speaks funny (see: Alpha Dog and 3:10 to Yuma), and here he gets to let loose. Danny Huston is laughably terrible as the Head Vampire who spouts faux-poetic gibberish, but he’s not the only one. Instead of striking terror, the screeching vampires instead prompt fits of giggles. Is it any surprise? They look like sad Goths pretending to be Velociraptors. It’s not even cool, let alone scary.
"30 Days of Night" opens October 19, 2007 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by David Slade. Written by Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie, Brian Nelson. Starring Ben Foster, Danny Huston, Josh Hartnett, Melissa George.
