30 Days of Night

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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Let’s get something straight before I start.

Samuel Danger Allen is a Comic Book fan first, Movie fan second, so in some cases I can be more lenient on films based on comics and others I can be more critical.

Now that that’s out of the way, 30 Days of Night is a film by David Slade based on a Graphic Novel by Steve Niles (who also wrote the screenplay, hmm…). It stars that hunk we all love, Josh Hartnett, who usually plays a cutie pie. Before seeing the film, he seemed a bit out of place, but he certainly pulled it off.

Hartnett plays Eben Olsen, the sheriff of a town in northern Alaska where, for one whole month, the sun stays set and it’s night for 30 days and 30 nights (not to be confused with the other Josh Hartnett film).

Coincidently, this is the perfect setting for a gang of unruly
vampires. You see, if you didn’t already know, vampires cannot survive the intensity of sunlight so when they feed on human flesh they must do it at night. On any other morning, in any other location they would be piles of ash. So it was no surprise when a huge group of vampires
led by Danny Huston showed up. Am I the only one who saw this coming? I feel like Alaska should be vampire-proofed by now.

Wait, Danny Huston? That stickler from the number 23? He’s the head vampire? Yes,
and like Hartnett, he pulls it off, if not better than Hartnett. So the idea is that the vampires were a secret race of creatures and if anyone found out about their existence, they would be immediately exterminated. So, after they start feeding on these poor innocent people, they have to kill EVERYONE in the town before the sun rises again, all while Josh Hartnett leads a group of survivors against them. In many ways its like a gruesome horror/vampire/Alaska version
of Red Dawn.

How it ends up: I’m Satisfied. This was everything the comic was, probably because they were written by the same dude. Each role is played better than a street performer would, which is a plus for underground comic book movies these days. It has depth and quite a bit of it. There are parts where you actually may be scared. What’s amazing about the film is how freakin’ bloody it is; not simply the fact that it’s bloody — even Barbie Horse Adventures has a couple torture scenes these days. What’s amazing is the fact that it has both blood and depth, so even if you aren’t impressed with the story and wish you had gone and seen Saw 4, you may just be satisfied with what you have on your plate.

Definitely a film for horror fans. Possibly a film for comic fans. Not quite a film for George Cloony fans. Definitely not a film for My Dog Skip fans.

By Samuel Danger Allen