Vampires have been re-imagined and reinterpreted to the point where they've become filtered down into mournful, sappy Goths or superheroes — but what they haven't been for a very long time is scary. 30 Days of Night, if nothing else, corrects this oversight and delivers some onscreen vamps worth cowering in fear from.
Based on the Steve Niles–Ben Templesmith graphic novel, 30 Days has a relatively simple premise: Sun-adverse vampires descend upon a tiny Alaska town on the eve of its month-long period of 24-hour darkness. Speaking in a guttural language all their own with pitch black eyes and rows of teeth that make them resemble walking sharks, these screeching vampires are eating machines. And I mean "screeching" — their pre-strike battle cry is as excruciating as nails on a chalkboard in THX surround sound, which is kept cranked to 11 throughout the film.
Once their arrival has been properly heralded by a straggly stranger (a suitably unsettling Foster, playing Renfield as a homeless street crazy), the vampires swiftly get to the feasting. The few remaining townsfolk eventually hole up alongside the local sheriff (Hartnett) and his estranged wife (George), and try to survive until dawn comes…in a few weeks' time.
Slade, a music video director who made a big splash with the sexual predator–themed shocker Hard Candy, does his best to give 30 Days the same kind of skewed, otherwordly look that artist Templesmith achieved on page — and often succeeds. In the few instances where he fails, however, it becomes momentarily difficult to see Barrow, Alaska, as anything but a fake snow–covered soundstage. While problems in logic are as tied into the fabric of horror films as fake blood and toplessness, the movie also, initially, asks you to believe that these vampires are so intelligent and well-prepared that they sneak around and steal everyone's cell phones prior to the attack (which is, in itself, tough to swallow) but then dumb enough to allow the few survivors easy access to a hardware store full of potential weapons. Then there's "The Muffin Monster," a giant, metal-chewing trash-compactor machine with a cute nickname whose introduction and related "foreshadowing" is so ham-fisted that might as well be called "The Thing-You'll-See-People-Chucked-Into-Later-in-the-Film Monster," And Hartnett continues to be a less-than-charismatic film presence — he's handsome and delivers his lines with plenty of scowl, but he's so bloodless that he never once earns your sympathy. It's made even worse in his scenes with Foster, who crackles with palatable intensity.
But apart from its few flaws (which, considering the state of horror movies lately, are fairly minimal), Slade orchestrates events in 30 Days like a true horror fan; meaning, it's nasty, there are plenty of cheer-inducing gory deaths (assuming you're the type who cheers at cool death scenes — one character's beheading is particularly gruesome), but it's all pulled off with a firm sense of the fun in being scared.
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READ: The Hollywood Vampire Club
WATCH VIDEO: Trailer
Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.