Movie Review for 30 Days of Night
Synopsis: In a small Alaskan town, thirty days of night is a natural phenomenon. Very few outsiders visit, until a band of bloodthirsty, deathly pale vampires mark their arrival by savagely attacking sled dogs. But soon they find there are much more satisfying thirst-quenchers about: human beings. One by one, the townspeople succumb to a living nightmare, but a small group survives — at least for now. The vampires use the dark to their advantage, and surviving this cold hell is a game of cat and mouse…and screams.
Rating: R for strong horror violence and language.
Run Time: 1 Hour 53 Minutes
Director: David Slade
Dvd Extra’s: 30 Images of Night, Commentary, Featurettes.
Nudity Factor: None.
Of Note: The vampires speak a completely original language. It was created for the film with the help of a linguistics professor at a New Zealand university.
Recommendations: 28 Days Later – 28 Weeks Later – The Descent – The Mist
The first thing I want to mention is the location and setting for this story is great. Go to a place that is cold, snow covered, and about to experience 30 days of darkness. Have some strange things happen just before darkness sets in. Then have something start feeding on the few people that are left. Mix in some drama between a few people, and now you have a horror film. The funny thing with this story is that it started out as a screen play, became a comic book, then once again became a screen play. The story is a good one. When they made this movie, they wanted to be close to the frames in the comic book. Since this is based on a comic book, some of my complaints come from the source material. I never really liked the way the vampires looked, walked, or acted. It would be easy to blame the actors and actresses for this or even the director, but this is more related to how they appeared in the comic book.
Overall, I liked the story. Though I find one major weakness to the movie. Why would the vampires hang around for the entire 30 days. It would seem they would get their fill and leave. Yet they stick around to get every last person. It would seem that within a few days they would have the bulk of the people, and it would not be worth the effort. This flaw in the story really takes this down a bit. Still, I enjoyed the bulk of the movie.