30 Days of Night

2007 • Dir: David Slade • St: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston

Premise: The tiny Alaskan town of Barrow goes through 30 days without sunshine every year. This year, a gang of vampires decides to take advantage of the 30 days and engages in an orgy of blood-drinking. Only the local Sheriff and his estranged wife can stop them.

Analysis: 30 Days of Night is based on the IDW graphic novel of the same name by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. Steve Niles contributed to the screenplay as well.

The set up for this film is pretty straightforward and does not veer too far away from the graphic novel. Early on, seemingly random events conspire to make the already remote Barrow almost inaccessible - the town's mobile phones are stolen and destroyed, the sled dogs are brutally killed, and eventually the power is killed just after the final sunset for a month.

Josh Hartnett plays Sheriff Eben Oleson (Olemaun in the comic), and Melissa George plays his estranged wife Stella (both are happily married in the comic). While Eben is dealing with the strange, random events that will eventually isolate Barrow, Stella becomes stranded in Barrow when an accident causes her to miss the last flight to Anchorage for a month. Hartnett is quite convincing as the heartbroken but diligent Sheriff, and seems to carry a repressed weariness in all his early scenes.

I don't really need to cover the events of this film too closely - a community of 150-odd people stranded in a remote town with no sunshine for 30 days, plus a gang of hungry vampires led by Danny Huston's truly creepy vampire leader Marlow. Yep, it's pretty much what you think it's going to be - a savage and brutal war of attrition, with most of the attrition on the side of the helpless humans.

What I will touch on are some of the differences between film and graphic novel, as well as the portrayal of the vampires.

As noted above, there are some differences in the two leads between their comic and film incarnations. Usually film adaptations of comics make me want to pull my hair out. Some are note perfect, or thematically strong (Sin City and The Dark Knight leap to mind) while others miss the point in small or often catastrophic ways (Watchmen and A History of Violence leap to mind here). 30 days of Night the film does leave out one important subplot from the comic, namely the notion that not all vampires think slaughtering a whole town is really a good idea. In place of this sacrificed subplot is a much more detailed focus on the survivors in Barrow. The sacrifices they make, the grief they suffer, the fear that dominates them. 30 Days presents us with survivors who look, tired, dirty, hungry and mournful, rather than a group of pretty 20-somethings with designer dirt that other films like to give us *cough* *Michael Bay* *cough*.

The term 'survival horror' gets bandied about a lot these days, and while its origins and definition in console games are quite defined, its filmic parallels are not always so neatly identified. In fact survival horror in film has become almost synonymous with the zombie. I think 30 Days of Night presents an almost text book example of what defines survival horror - helpless people in helpless circumstances facing a horrific rate of casualties to the enemy, and an enemy that is implacable, relentless and bloodthirsty. Watching not only the deaths, but their knock-on effects - panic, helplessness, fractiousness, shame and disgust - unfold in 30 Days, leaves me convinced that Steve Niles not only translated his comic to film, but in some regards drastically improved it.

Which leads me to the fangers. The vampires of 30 Days are truly horrifying. No elegant European Counts, or whiny sparkly things here. No, the vamps of 30 Days are snarling, black-eyed, shark-toothed monsters. They move like agile predators. Their guttural vampire language sends shivers down your spine, and the tactics they have used to isolate Barrow engender a feeling of creeping unease long before you even see them. The blood splattered over their very pale skin, and all over their clothing only reinforces their savagery. They look, and act, like monsters. And not a moment too soon I say. 30 Days delivers what was sorely needed for vampires - an iteration that makes you remember why vamps are supposed to be scary. 30 Days' undead fangers are true monsters in every way, and restore vampires to their spot as the kings of the horror monster. The helplessness of the humans before these monsters is made truly stark when Huston's Marlow and his gang have captured one of the helpless Barrovians. Tearfully, she begs God to save her. Marlow angles his head quizzically 'God? No God.' he merely says before she is ruthlessly slaughtered. Marlow's statement leaves us in an almost Lovecraftian universe, a world that is godless as well as actively hostile to mankind. When his female off-sider is hideously burned with a UV lamp, he mutters 'What can be broken must be broken' before killing her - a truly shark-like ethos. The savage predation of these vamps extends even to their own kind.

Special mention must be made here of Ben Foster's character 'The Stranger', the henchman who paves the way for the vampires' arrival. His psychotic demeanour, almost English like teeth and peculiar accent make him a 'Renfield' above Renfields. Though his fate is the traditional fate of all loonies who choose to serve vampires, he still stands out as a truly unsettling henchman.

The violence is not tucked away quietly either. After some early scenes where the vampires hunt from the shadows, glimpsed briefly before vanishing again, the last half of the film does not shirk from splattering the old ketchup around, mainly from Eben's handy fire axe. Mark Boone Jr's character Beau Brower (the town recluse) also dishes out a spectacular action scene that slices and dices no small number of the interloping fangers.

Spoiler Alert: the Ending

Well actually, this time I'm not going to spoil it. The ending makes sense in a very selfless way, that I think fits in very neatly with the survival horror ethos.

So, is this film worth seeing? Hell yeah. If you're after a vampire flick, you could do far worse than this gem. The comic and the film make good companion pieces, rather than necessarily fuel for an argument as to which one got it 'right'.

Stars: 4 out of 5