30 Days of Night resurrects the vampire horror film genre with hardcore grit and gore. In this R-rated graphic novel adaptation, Josh Harnett plays an Alaskan cop who must protect his remote village from a paramilitary styled attack waged by a team of sadistic undead.
30 Days of Night is a good horror film. Josh Harnett and Melissa George provide the requisite eye-candy as the heroic gun-toting/ax wielding power couple. Ben Foster gives a bone-chilling performance as the vampires’ human enabler. And there are enough shockingly realistic ax murders to give the most jaded viewer flashbacks for days. In several scenes, Harnett takes three or more chops to sever friends’ heads.
Still, and as is expected for the genre, wooden dialog and stale imagery occasionally pepper the film. In one bizarre scene, three unwitting factory workers debating where they should have their threesome get ripped to shreds. The dialog is contrived here and weakens the impact of the carnage the three would-be lovers soon suffer. In another scene, the camera work focuses on the nightwalkers’ Semitic looking noses and pale olive skin, without more. Clarifying the creatures’ place of origin, rather than hinting at it, would give 30 Days of Night some meat.
Also, some major plot points go unanswered. How the humans are able to go 7 days in an attic without food and remain undetected, when the vampires can smell human blood from a distance, remains a mystery.
Overall, 30 Days of Night provides great Halloween fun.