Review of 30 Days Of Night

Introduction

Vampire flicks and graphic novel adaptations are currently the vogue, and 30 Days of Night is based on a successful graphic novel by writer Steven Niles and artist Ben Templesmith - what? No Alan Moore? Not everything has to have his name attached, you know. Besides, he`d only get a bit annoyed at whatever they did to his story…

Barrow is a wee town in Alaska, where every winter the town is plunged into complete darkness for 30 days. As you can imagine, this sort of thing can drive the ordinary person completely mad and so most of the inhabitants head south for a month.

Local sheriff Eben Olesen (Josh Hartnett) is doing his final checks before everyone disappears and finds a couple of strange things; a pile of burnt mobile phones and the senseless slaughter of all of the town`s huskies. Unknown to him, his estranged wife Stella Oleson (Melissa George) is in town for, presumably, the county fire department doing checks before hoping to bug out of town with everyone else and completely avoiding her ex-husband for reasons completely unspecified - a traffic accident from nowhere (is there another kind in film?) soon puts paid to that though.

Eben arrests mysterious dirt-ridden stranger without a name (Ben Foster) and promptly locks him up instead of taking him to a dentist or giving him a shower - not sure which was the greater need, but it`s a close run thing. The stranger warns of great danger approaching, but seems quite pleased about it all. Eben is understandably confused, he`s played by Josh Hartnett after all, but things get even darker very quickly as the power gets shuts down, the town`s PC goes down (dammit, no solitaire for a month…) and all the phones go dead.

All is soon revealed as the sinister and rather pale Marlow (Danny Huston) leads his merry gang of vampires into town for a quick snack and a howl or two at the non-existent moon. Marlow and his brood are a bit of a mixed breed, swarthy well-dressed East Europeans who don`t understand basic table manners such as chewing with their mouths closed, thus leaving lots of blood all over the town and themselves; and there`s not even a decent dry cleaning franchise about either...

It`s up to the estranged husband and wife team of Eben and Stella to round up the remnants of the townsfolk and keep them safe until sunlight returns…

Video

Picture looks great, albeit very dark (obviously) and in 16:9, with some quite brilliant overhead tracking shots during the initial rampage through the town. On the minus side, and a huge minus, it appears that Icon are attempting to beat Universal at their game when it comes to press preview discs. Not only is there a stupid banner with `Property of Icon` across the bottom of the screen, there`s also a huge bloody clock in the top right that take up most of the upper portion of the screen. Not happy with that, and you can judge why from the screenshots.

Audio

Apparently the real thing comes with DTS, 5.1 and Stereo soundtracks plus subtitles. I only got a Dolby Stereo 2.0 soundtrack without subs…

Features

There`s a shedload of extras plus a free graphic novel (probably similar to the part complete one given away with V For Vendetta) according to the PR blurb with this disc, but with an incomplete press disc without menu`s and all, I didn`t get to see any of them…

Conclusion

As mentioned in the introduction, there has been a rash of graphic novel adaptations over the last few years and more to come, including the much vaunted Watchmen by everyone`s favourite sulky graphic novelist Alan Moore. This one is from a lesser-known series, at least to the mainstream, and makes a fair fist of a decent film. And one a little different from the norm at that.

There is no exposition or attempt at explanation as to where the vampires come from, they`re just suddenly here and all hell breaks loose. So much more satisfying. There`s very little attempt at characterisation here either, and that`s a bit of a mixed blessing. You know that the two leads in Hartnett and George have marital problems of sorts as it`s referred to, but no further explanation or exploration. The motley crew rounded up by the dynamic duo are also mainly your standard cliché ridden genre disposable characters. No matter, this is exactly what they mean by `taking your brain out and just go along for the ride`.

That`s not to say that there aren`t plot holes and for a film that is supposed to convey 30 days of night, it never feels like it. I can`t even remember a subtitle stating that time had moved on (although Hartnett`s poor attempt at a moustache may well have been an indicator), but then I doubt I would have noticed with all the all other stuff that Icon stuck on my screen. The ending felt a little rushed; the end of level scrap with the big boss was a bit of an anti-climax really.

Don`t think I didn`t like this though, as I really enjoyed this and it`s not really a horror but a vampire genre flick. There`s not that much gore, although there`s buckets and buckets of blood spilt. The action is near enough unremitting, although the ending is a little unorthodox and slightly unbelievable, but it`s based on a graphic novel (and fairly faithful by all accounts) and these things always look better in print than on screen - see the way that the big fight finishes, I can just imagine the comic strip panel where that happens. Thwok! Or something.

Overall you can see that David Slade was attempting for the bleakness of Carpenter`s The Thing but with much more action. He kind of gets it as well, although Hartnett is no Kurt Russell and there`s no Keith David character here at all (who could actually play Keith David bar himself anyway…).

Pretty good actually, although marked down for the soundtrack and lack of extras on my release disc (but I`ve also been a bit more forgiving about the on-screen nonsense than I maybe should have been).