REVIEW - "30 Days of Night" (2007)

Going on the events of this film, I’d say it was about twenty-nine days too long. “30 Days of Night” was hyped as being a new take on the vampire mythos. Well, director David Slade did give us some new vampires—He made them dumber, far more needlessly violent and wrote enough of them in to the movie to be cannon fodder. Basically they’re just zombies with willpower. And my willpower to leave the theater was growing with every passing minute during this movie.

The plot, such as it is, gives us a small town in Alaska that sits through a full month of darkness once every year. In a badly explained turn of events, a hoard of vampires decides to take over the town as soon as the sun leaves. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) must now try and survive the remainder of the month with the survivors of the town. That’s it…

The storyline basically ends after the vampires attack. The town is completely taken over by the first night and from there the film divulges in who is going to die next and how they are going to die. Do we ever get a full explanation for where these vampires came from? No. What about the boat? Do we know where they got the boat? No. Do we know how the stranger (played by Ben Foster and was the only interesting character in the film) got himself involved with these vampires? No. How about where do they go at the end of the movie? Nope. It’s a bad movie, why should it explain this stuff?

The flimsy plot is accompanied by some very off-hand moments in the film that are just gruesome and meaningless in every way possible. A young woman is sent out as bait to lure the survivors and is tortured before she is killed. Another man kills his own family so they won’t suffer the fate of being eaten by vampires. And then there’s the little girl in the grocery store. Lets just say I wasn’t the only person in the theater that laughed hysterically at the line, “I’m through playing with this one.” (Feeding on a dead body.) “Wanna play with me NOW!” Yes, that was meant to be creepy. Yes, it failed to be said creepiness.

I’m also reminded as to why Josh Hartnett hasn’t been in anything in awhile. The guy overacted throughout the entire film doing his best William Shatner impression and making sure he’s as serious as possible during this mess of a movie. Other characters? I think they tried to flesh out a love story of some sort, but I was obviously really engrossed by it because I remember so much of it. (That’s sarcasm for those who didn’t catch on.)

The vampires don’t act like your average vampire. They speak their native “vampire language” the whole time, all their teeth are sharp (as opposed to just two), they act more animalistic and they’re a lot dumber than the vampires portrayed in past films. They also make these screeching noises that are suppose to be scary, I think, but they were rather obnoxious. The sound effect was overused and un-welcomed. As I’ve said before, they’re more akin to zombies than vampires. They even have the “28 Days Later” infected-eye effect. So I guess when David Slade set out to reinvent the vampire character, what he really meant to do was make (another) bad, redundant, zombie flick. Congratulations!

The ending of the film is so ridiculous and anti-climatic that I wasn’t sure what to do—Except laugh. It left itself open for a sequel just incase it doesn’t bomb at the box office, but I don’t think that will be happening. “30 Days of Night” is long, boring, laughable and hard to sit through. Its ultimate sin is the fact that it left me self-aware. Whenever I’m sitting through a movie and looking around, checking my watch and finding the theater decorations more entertaining, I know I’m sitting through a dud. I’d say it’s the worst movie of 2007, but I’m having trouble recalling “Pathfinder.” It’s close!

½ out of ****