30 Days of Night (2007) **1/2

 

It's fair to say that vampires are hardly under-represented in Hollywood lore. Since 1922's “Nosferatu,” the blood-sucking undead have been a Hollywood staple. We've seen vampires in every flavor you can imagine: scary, funny, sexy, ugly, you name it. So what innovation does “30 Days of Night” bring to the table? Well, in most vampire movies, the characters just have to survive the night. If they can make it to morning, the sun will rise, the vampires will be forced into hiding, and the good guys get a chance to regroup. But what about the arctic, the Land of the Midnight Sun, the flip side of which is mid-day darkness in winter?

“30 Days of Night” is set in Barrow, now called Utquiagvik, the most northerly town in Alaska. The town is preparing for the darkest part of winter, when the sun doesn't rise for weeks. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) starts getting a lot of strange calls. Someone has sabotaged the town's communications and helicopter, leaving everyone stuck there incommunicado during a period when no one generally is able to enter or leave. Soon, the dark city is beset by vampires, and with sunrise weeks away, the townsfolk have no choice but to hide or fight.

This film does some things right, but it also gets a lot wrong. For one thing, it isn't just 30 days. The sun sets in Utquiagvik around November 18^th each year and does not rise again until January 22^nd. I guess “64 Days of Night” didn't have the same ring to it. I'll give them artistic license on that. The bigger complaint is that the way the film is put together, you really get little sense of the whole vampire reign of terror lasting even a month. One scene hops right to the next, and it really feels like the film takes place in one night. That's a missed opportunity, as this film's one original idea is the whole endless night situation.

All that said, this is not actually all that bad a horror film. The vampires are truly scary, and they speak a cool, Eastern-European sounding vampire language. The acting is decent for this type of film, and I generally enjoyed the movie, which is based on a comic series. It might be interesting to watch this back-to-back with Christopher Nolan's 2002 film, “Insomnia,” which is set during the Alaskan summer.

2.5 stars out of 5