30 Days of Night (2007)

Today I took another film off my personal "to watch" list, 30 Days of Night. I'd heard that this movie wasn't all that good, but the concept always stuck in my head and I just wanted to see it for myself. It's safe to say that I came into this one with safely lowered expectations. All I wanted was to see some vampires being violent and bloody and not sparkly. I can tell you now that I got just that. This is a horror movie to be sure! To find out if I was satisfied with my viewing experience or let down despite my lowered expectations, you'll have to read on after the jump.


The unique situation of this film is that it is set in Barrow, Alaska. Barrow is the northern most town in the United States and once a year the sun sets for a full month. Unfortunately, this time the town is beset by a clan of hungry vampires which take full advantage of the sun-less month. Within only a few days, nearly all the inhabitants have been captured, slaughtered, or worse. In the middle of it all is Eben Oleson, the Sheriff of Barrow. Being trained and armed with a shotgun, he is one of the few that survive the first onslaught. He manages to help keep several citizens alive including his brother and his estranged wife. The bigger problem will be surviving for the next 29 days.

The stranger approches

I really liked how the movie started. We see a stranger wander into down from what appears to be a large tanker that has either beached itself or gotten stuck in the ice not too far from the town. We then meet Eben who is getting reports of stolen cell phones all over town, vandalism at the power plant and a horrible attack that kills all the sled dogs in the town. Piece by piece you get to see the town cut off from the rest of the world before the sun sets for the first day. As the sun sets, the stranger reappears and starts causing a ruckus at the diner and starts talking about those who are coming.

If it isn't clear, the set up and premise of the film are AWESOME!

Eben is played by Josh Hartnett and the stranger is played by Ben Foster. I really liked Ben Foster and he acted extra freaked out and crazy. He was just great. Josh Hartnett did an alright job, which was about par for the course with the rest of the cast. I had a bit of a hard time buying that Hartnett was the sheriff though since he got really scared at the start, but as the film progresses he really toughens up. Actually the other actor I really liked was Mark Boone Jr who was pretty cool as the guy that lived way outside of town. He was kind of a hermit, and it was only a small role, but he was a good character.

On the run, surrounded by snow, darkness, and vampires!

I think I should bring up the effects of the vampires. While the gore and horror was pretty good, all practical I believe, some of the vampires were altered with computer effects to make them look extra inhuman. While the "boss" vampire look fairly normal, save for the black eyes, pale white skin and piranha teeth, the other vampires all had distorted facial bone structures. It seemed to make all their eyes look exaggeratedly angled and just odd. Sometimes it looked good, and other times it looked really stupid. It was never explained why the main vamp looked so much different than the others, or why almost all of them seemed to have extremely different teeth. It's a minor gripe, but it did bother me a bit.

Boss man vampire is pretty damn creepy!

Since the movie covers the passage of an entire month, the vast majority of the time they spend hiding simply can't be shown. There is text that comes up to say "Day 7" and such, but I never got the feeling that any more than a few days had past for the entire film. They don't deal with how they get food, or other necessities. I would also think that so much time sitting in utter silence would drive more than a few of them crazy especially with all the added stress of being hunted 24/7 by monsters that shouldn't exist. In that respect the movie really failed for me, even though I enjoyed a lot of the movie otherwise. Lastly, I never saw the ending coming, and it was pretty great.

For people who like vampires, and not the sparkly kind, and people who like horror movies and maybe even zombie movies, this might very well be a movie you'll enjoy. It has some flaws, but nothing that ruined the experience for me. It wasn't great, but I liked it none the less.