Film Review: Not your usual blood suckers
“30 Days of Night” probably won’t make audiences jump out of their seats, but every moviegoer who sees this will get creeped out.
The movie takes place in Barrow, Alaska, a tiny town where – for 30 days every year – the sun doesn’t rise. On the last day of sunlight, airplanes and most of the people leave.
In the first few scenes of the movie, the town’s cell phones are mysteriously torched outside of the city limits, the only helicopter is vandalized beyond function and every sled dog is viciously killed – completely isolating the town from civilization.
Enter the vampires.
In their first few appearances, the superfast undead appear like shadows, stealing people and sneaking around. When they decide to full-on invade Barrow, they’re pale humanoid creatures with all-black eyes and jutting jaws and fangs.
Without the sun, humans have lost their biggest ally and the results are no less than expected.
There’s not much valiant fighting on the non-monster side. When the vampires drop in, the humans of Barrow are unprepared, confused and really juicy. There’s one sweeping overhead shot of the town’s main street under siege. The humans are bewildered and trying to fight, whereas the vampires easily succeed in feeding. The rest of the movie is almost more post-apocalyptic than out-and-out horror. A small band of survivors hunker down in an attic and try to stay alive for the next month.
Unlike other vampire movies, where vampires seem more like evil humans with big teeth and a thirst for blood, the biters in “30 Days of Night” are feral, animalistic beings who have as much in common with humans as humans do with beetles. The scary thing is not that they’re hunting humans down to eat them, but that they don’t have to hunt them. The vampires seem to terrorize the humans more out of boredom and sport than any real necessity.
This movie doesn’t go for cheap scares. There are very few scenes where the action is sudden enough to startle audiences, but the movie is still frightening. The general idea of no escape and vicious villains is more terrifying than the villains leaping out at people. The humans have absolutely no advantage and their only hope is the slow-coming daylight. They’re obviously in a bad spot when a whiteout is help, allowing them to move from a compromised hiding spot.
The limited space of the town, which shrinks as the vampires destroy cars and get closer to finding Barrow’s survivors, creates a claustrophobic, Anne-Frank-in-the-attic suspense. Coupled with tastefully simple music and mercilessly brutal villains, this movie’s atmosphere is one of the most chilling in recent releases.
Stylistically, this movie is impeccable. It not only stays surprisingly true to the watercolors of 2005’s groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name, but makes use of the dark of the relentless night. Vampires and humans alike use the shadows to their advantage, adding another layer of paranoia so that there’s no telling what could be lurking in the corner.
With such a spooky premise, the only surprise is that Hollywood waited so long to make this movie.
‘30 Days of Night’
Release Date: Oct. 19
Director: David Slade
Starring:Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Ben Foster
Genre: Horror
Rating: Rated R for strong horror violence and language
Grade: A-
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on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 am and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Film Reviews.
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