By Kofi Outlaw

At this point vampire films are kind of like fruitcake at Christmas: every year we seem to get another one, and rarely do we like what is being offered. Along the wide spectrum of vampire flicks, I would place 30 DAYS OF NIGHT somewhere in the middle. The film offers a unique and creative premise is wonderfully put together, the acting is acceptable, yet there are definitely some glaring plot holes which drag it down to B-movie level.

Based on the groundbreaking 2002 comic book miniseries of the same name, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is set in the small Alaskan town of Barrow, “the northernmost city in the known U.S.” Every year the sun sets on Barrow for thirty days, pitting residents against the dark, the cold and the tedious strain of isolation. It also makes the town the perfect buffet for a clan of ravenous vampires, who descended on Barrow the moment the sun sinks beneath the horizon, massacring the townspeople and feeding on their blood.

Surviving the initial wave of slaughter, town sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George), manage to keep their wits long enough to gather what surviving town members they can, taking refuge in an abandoned attic to await the return of sunlight. Of course panic and stupidity soon take over and members of the group start getting picked off, often in brutal ways, as the merciless vampires try to weed them out of hiding.

Technically speaking, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT looks like a highly polished version of its B-movie subject matter. Director David Slade peppers the film with some of the more artistic shots and striking imagery that distinguished the comics, without trying to transfer that medium to the screen frame by frame—a wise choice. Screenwriters Stuart Beattie, Brian Nelson and Steve Niles, (one of the co-writers of the comics,) anchor the script in the tone of the source material’s bleak, hanging-by-a-thread sense of desperation. The vampires play their parts accordingly, mixing their roles with equal parts feral menace, kid-in-a-candy-store glee, and shocking moments of ferocity when dispatching their victims. There is nothing romanticized about these monsters: they are superior predators, stalking prey on the ideal killing ground.


Sinking his teeth into the role of vampire leader Marlow, Danny Huston steals every scene he has, despite being surrounded by so many other leather-clad members of the undead. Ben Foster, (sealing his fate as Hollywood’s go-to lunatic character-actor,) makes a cameo as the vamps’ human servant (a la Renfield from DRACULA,) who sneaks into Barrow to prepare it for invasion. The rest of the Homo sapiens in the film are pretty much just fodder, figuratively and literally. Hartnett and George tow the emotional line of the story well enough, right up to the dubious ending, which no actors on earth could have pulled off without drawing a few unintentional laughs from the crowd.

As I said at the start, there were some glaring holes in the logic of the film. For one thing, Ben Foster’s character sneaks into Barrow and steals every mobile phone without getting noticed by any of the close-knit townsfolk, who should have easily picked him out as a stranger. Even more implausible was the fact that the surviving humans are able to hide for weeks from the vampires, even though there are several references to the vamps being able to “smell blood” like wolves on the prowl. You’d think the scent of clustered (and un-showered) humans would be easy to detect. Most confounding though, was the fact that these vampires—who speak in their own language and never once use English—are somehow able to communicate complex instructions to Ben Foster’s character on how to prepare the town for siege, and then later, send a woman out into the streets as bait. Right. Luckily none of these logical missteps distracts too much from the mayhem.


At the end of the day how you feel about 30 DAYS OF NIGHT will depend entirely on your love (or lack thereof) for vampire movies. If you dig them, you’ll dig this film, both for its highly stylized appearance and great premise. If you don’t generally revel in the exploits of the undead, the film will offer you little more than the usual blood-and-chills horror-movie frills. But until SAW 4 rolls around to seal the Halloween season, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is a suitable distraction.