Halloween Marathon: 30 Days of Night (2007)

If you don’t already know, I’m a huge vampire fan. I love vampires to bits, except for Twilight series.  I watch everything else pretty much.  This was somewhat of a spontaneous buy when I felt that I wanted to add a vampire flick in and bought 30 Days of Night from the bargain bin. I’m not familiar with what this is about but the synopsis on the box seemed interesting enough.  To my surprise, David Slade, director of Hard Candy, is also the director of this one.

Director: David Slade

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Mark Boone Junior, Mark Rendall

In Alaska, there is one month where everyone lives in complete darkness.  Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) is preparing to go into that month, when killings are found right before they plunge into darkness.  The town is suddenly cut off of power and they find that they are now hunted by species that want their blood (aka vampires).  They thrive on the darkness that surrounds them and Eben with his younger brother Jake (Mark Rendall), separated wife Stella (Melissa George) and a small group of survivors must find a way to survive through the 30 days.

I like horror thrillers and I like vampires.  I also even like the actress Melissa George.  30 Days of Night is a fun flick.  There’s really nothing deep about it and most of it is pretty predictable. Maybe its because I was pretty much brain dead by the time I turned this on but it was pretty good.  The vampires was different in appearance and they looked really creepy.  They looked downright evil and they portrayed them speaking in a foreign/unknown language.  Interesting for sure.  This was adapted from a graphic novel (that I haven’t read) so it had its decent load of blood and gore.

I’m not big on darkness so when movies focus on putting their setting in dark areas, I feel the horror in itself already. This town is covered in snow so I think the reality of it is that snow does reflect and has this nice hue and the camera kind of captured that.  I felt the movie was shot well.  There was one particular scene that I really enjoyed when it did this bird’s view over top and scanned the area while stuff was going on down in the town.  That was a pretty awesome scene.

Its been a few days since I’ve seen 30 Days of Night.  Nothing really is in my mind except a jumble of numbers ( I work with numbers).  I just remember a few scenes that I really liked.  There was some blood, some thrills, and some lengthy predictable parts.  An average horror thriller, but one that I enjoyed enough 🙂 At least the vampires are done really well.  That already works for me quite well.  The DVD box said that this was the scariest vampire movie or something, its not, ok? Stop false advertising, please.  That all that really bothered me.  I try to keep my expectations at a minimum whenever I go into anything that I haven’t heard of prior.

Are you into vampire movies? Which is your fave? Have you seen this one before?  Did you ever read the graphic novel this was based on?