31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 4 - 30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night

113 Minutes

Dir. David Slade

2007/USA

Bloody, visceral, messy, all out horror vampires.  That’s what you get in 30 Days of Night.  A vampire movie strictly for horror fans, this one isn’t looking to make any converts.  This one was made for us.  So tonight, let’s go where the sun doesn’t shine for 30 days.  (Insert pun here.)

Based on a 2002 comic book from Steve Niles, 30 Days of Night deals with Barrow, the northern most town in Alaska, where they experience 30 days with no sunlight.  It’s the last day of sunlight and most of the town is evacuating because who wants to live without sunlight for 30 days, except maybe me.  Because fuck the sun.  So while most people are hightailing it out of town, our Renfield character is strolling into town.  Prepping the community if you will for his master and the rest of the vampire brigade, by stealing and burning cellphones and killing all the snow dogs.  When the town’s Sheriff played by Josh Hartnett finally catches up with him, he tosses him in jail, but by then it is too late.  The vampires have already descended onto Barrow.  And the 30 Days of Night has begun.

The Vampires in this film are far from your typical creatures of the night.  They do have fangs, (a whole mouth full), they do suck blood, (in and extremely messy and violent way), and they do look like the end of a cigarette from the sun.  We will have to assume that crosses, holy water and the such really have no effect on them.  These vampires are out for blood, they move faster than the human eye can see and they are much stronger than a mortal man.  A bullet or axe severing the head or any other kind of body dismemberment seems to put a stop to them.  But their speed and strength in numbers doesn’t allow much of an opportunity too often.

A town with no sun for 30 days, makes sense for vampires to want to go there.  In a fantastic aerial shot going down the street we see the vampires ransacking the town, attacking everything that moves.  People running to hide, screaming and a lot of red patches of snow littered about.  Josh Harnett, his wife who he is currently having marital problems with, Marc Boone Junior from Sons of Anarchy and a few others, hole themselves up in the attic of a house for days, trying to keep tabs on the silent attackers.  Eventually they try to make it out to the grocery store and finally to a power and sewage treatment plant, which is one of the few things that still has power in the town.  But how do you kill an enemy that is almost virtually unstoppable?

30 Days of Night holds no punches when it comes to the violence, not every splash of the sauce is up on screen, but there is enough of the red stuff spilt everywhere to hold your interest.  This is kind of a unique and fresh take on the old vampire story.  Danny Huston plays the lead vampire, and really brings fear back into the genre, as these vampires can’t be reasoned with.  They have their own language and their only motive is to feed on everyone, burn the town to hide the evidence and move on to the next location.

In 2010 a straight to DVD sequel was released but as expected didn’t really live up to the expectations of the original.  In 2006 a Swedish film called Frostbite about a town in northern Sweden that has no sunlight during the winter gets attacked by vampires.  Good flick, more of a horror/comedy and no way reminiscent of 30 Days…, but still worth a look.  If you want you can hold off on watching this one for Halloween and save it for the cold winter months afterwards to make it more fitting for the climate.