30 Days of Night - Fear and Loathing in Alaska
The creators of 30 Days of Night conceived their story of a month-long nightmare in sunless Alaska as a redefinition of the vampire. Bored with post-modern immortals who talk the talk, but don't stalk the stalk, Night's director David Slade and his team of writers promised some of the most frightening vampires ever, and for a few shockingly intense scenes they succeeded. Rejecting the frills for the feral, like punk rockers who rebel against the slickness and pomp of over-produced pop music, they've composed a few brilliant moments in their music of the night from raw, slashing chords and heart-pounding rhythms.
Though something is gained from this creative tack, something is lost as well. In turning the vampires of 30 Days of Night into such beastly, bloody horrors, they've rejected the subtlety of the vampire's creeping terror.
There's a shivery delight in experiencing an elegance in the horrific. The original Nosferatu was subtitled A Symphony of Terror, and there was a chilling grace even in the stiff movements of Count Orlok that turned rigor mortis into a dance of death. Vampire cinema is filled with such indelible moments: Dracula licking the razor in Francis Ford Coppola's version of Bram Stoker; Lestat pouring blood into a wine glass from a slashed wrist in Interview.
The vampires of 30 Days havn't the couth to even wipe their blood drenched faces, much less display such grace in the presence of gore. Even a wolf will lick its chops and groom itself after a fresh kill.
The point being, that in redefining the vampire, 30 Days of Night loses sight of not only the essence of why the vampire is such an icon of contemporary horror, but also of our awe in the presence of a sleek, elegant predator.
In rebelling against the evolution of the vampire into something less fearsome, the makers of 30 Days have worked a sort of de-evolution, amping up the shock value but making it something less in the opposite direction.
The story as told is a faithful adaptation of the popular graphic novel of the same name, in which a hoard of blood drinking nocturnals rampage through the town of Barrow, Alaska during the depths of winter when the sun never rises for thirty days.
The opening scenes of the film are most effective at presenting the bleak, frigid beauty of the lifeless snowscape as the story's characters are introduced. Unfortunately, the stark realism of the daylight scenes stand in contrast to the sound-staged quality of much of the film.
Most lacking is a sense of logic to the progression of events as a band of determined survivors bounce from one hiding place to another. A greater sense of the simple acts of survival (eating, sleeping, etc) could have given the story some much-needed realism in its scenes of hiding from the vampires.
Some brilliantly conceived scenes in which the vampires are shown displaying their super-human strength and several examples of graphic gore effects make 30 Days of Night an often entertaining fright film, making its missteps all the more unfortunate.
30 Days of Night
directed by David Slade
Starring
Josh Hartnett ...................Eben Oleson
Melissa George ..............Stella Oleson
Danny Huston .................Marlow
Jon Bennett .....................Billy Kitka
Ben Foster .......................The Stranger
Mark Boone Junior .........Beau Brower
Craig Hall .........................Wilson Bulosan
Mark Rendall ...................Jake Oleson
Ben Foster .......................The Stranger
Amber Sainsbury ............Denise
