30 Days of Night
April 23rd 2008 01:24
Category: Videos
Based on IDW Publishing Comic by: Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith.
Director: David Slade.
Producers: Sam Raimi & Rob Tapert.
Screenplay by: Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie & Brian Nelson.
Starring: Josh Hartnett (Eban), Melissa George (Stella), Ben Forster (The Stranger), Danny Huston (Marlow), Mark Rendall (Jake) & Mark Boone Jnr (Beau Brower).
Produced by: Ghost House Pictures in association with Dark Horse Entertainment.
Released by: Columbia Pictures.
Running Time: 108 minutes. Rating: MA 15
For those trainspotters out there Steve Niles who was one of the two creators of the graphic novel on which this movie was base as well as being involved in writing the screenplay along with Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson was the guy behind the story of Batman: Gotham County Line which was reviewed here on the Lantern a while back. A little bit of trivia for you.
So what is 30 Days of Night all about then? Let me set the scene a little, the drama takes place in the township of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States. Barrow is located in Alaska, in the region of the Arctic Circle and apparently there are no roads for 80km around the town, when the snow starts to fall big time you are literally snowed in. On top of that for thirty days there is a period of continual darkness, the sun does not shine it is night time for the whole day every day during this single month. It’s not exactly a fun kind of sounding environment to be in and it certainly takes on a whole new meaning in the movie. Of course I have to say that if I was asked to go live there the name itself would cause some reservations, after all a Barrow is often a place where the dead are buried in particular Viking and Saxon thegns, kings and heroes were all buried in barrows. It would make me wonder if the place wasn’t the site of some ancient burial ground whose existence is only known purely through the name of the town.
30 Days of Night is what could be called a vampire/horror flick where said vampires in this drama are brutal blood thirsty monsters with an eternal hunger for the blood of the living. If anything the vampires in this flick hark back to the ghoulish looking critter in that silent movie classic Nosferatu made in the early twentieth century in Germany, by all accounts Nosferatu really scared the socks of audiences at the time and its primary character was a real horror, he wouldn’t have fitted in with the swanky crowd from the Lost Boys, not by a long shot. Nor would the host of bloodsuckers in this film fit in with those trendy West Coast nightwalkers, if anything this mob would probably smack the Lost Boys down for being weak and dandified. No show ground scenes with members of Tina Turner’s band playing the saxophone with gleaming muscles to a crowd of hormone and beer crazed teenagers here, this is all about terror and carnage.
Events open with an unusual scene, the ocean with various ice floes floating peacefully, in the distance can be seen a ship of some kind either an oil tanker or a container ship and a solitary figure who stands seemingly wistfully glancing out at the ship and the sunset (or is it sunrise) before turning away to face inland. Once his back is to the ship and the ocean he heads onwards into the snow covered wastes looking somewhat worse for wear, this is the Stranger, the harbinger of doom that is fast approaching Barrow. And apart from this first glimpse we don’t see the Stranger again until the drama is a little bit further along in its playing.
From a solitary man walking away from an icy shore the action moves to what can only be described as a crime scene, a dead person badly burnt lies out in the middle of nowhere cell phone clutched in its hand. The two members of the Sheriff’s office Eban and Billy have no idea who the deceased may be, what they were doing out in middle of nowhere so far from what little civilization there is or even a motive for why they were killed. No doubt the person was killed as you just don’t spontaneously combust from a real bad tan…or do you? Being unable to come up with anything concrete the two sheriffs head back to town, the sun is setting and the month long night is slowly starting to drift in. People who don’t intend on staying or heading to the airport and boarding the last flight out bound for less in hospitable climes such as Anchorage or Seattle.
When the sun finally descends beneath the horizon and the darkness covers the land like a funerary shroud then this is when the ‘fun’ begins. The production crew and the actors have done a very good job with this film, I definitely found myself in a state of perpetual edginess with this movie it had a rather eerie feel, almost surreal yet it stuck to what I felt was a well thought out and tight story line though I confess I did think that there were some kinks in it that I’ll get later. As far as vampires go even though these guys where straight out bloodthirsty freaks who seemed to be constantly driven by their thirst they were intelligent and horrific antagonists whose appearance is nothing like the dainty gothic chic of the Lost Boys. The denizens of the darkness are literally feral in looks even though they wear clothing and the accoutrements of everyday life; they are creatures who whilst possessing some degree of intellect, have given themselves over to hunger and bloodlust.
There attack on the township of Barrow has been planned with all the precision of a military campaign and to some extent it succeeds in its objectives. Like a pack of starving wolves who have finally managed to corner a succulent morsel the vampires isolate the township from the outside world then begin to engage in feeding taking their time and making sure of the job. They also prevent the creation of further vampires and thus potential opposition, the leader of the crew orders his minions that once they’ve fed they must separate the head from the corpse so that they will not rise as one of them. This is traditional vampire lore, decapitation kills them stone dead and the feeding of a vampire upon a person can cause the victim to rise as a vampire. Sunlight also has a detrimental effect on them, they cannot handle it and there is one scene where an ultraviolet lamp is employed to some effect as a weapon against the vampires. Unfortunately they’re smart enough to realise that if you shut off the generator powering the lamp you can’t use it any more.
The one thing that puzzled me about this film was the time frame, if the vampires arrived in town as the same as Eban and Billy returning from the crime scene they’d been looking at at the start of the film then they must move incredibly fast, faster than a speeding locomotive almost. Also how did they get to this locale, if we assume that they arrived on the ship the stranger is looking at in the opening scene then what the heck happened to the ship? You certainly don’t see it when Eban and Billy are gazing out on the final sunset on the shoreline (out of camera perhaps?). Then of course there is that charred corpse clutching a cell phone, nothing more is actually said in the film about it and frankly I found myself wondering if it had been a vampire and then even if it had actually been necessary to include it at all. The other thing that nagged at me was the actual origin of these vampires, where did they come from and why did they find it necessary to seemingly roam the world in search of sustenance? Apparently it seems to be a survival thing, the more they keep moving the less likely they are to be spotted by society at large especially when they erase any evidence of their activities. There is a hint that they are fairly old, that they have managed over time to convince society at large that they are nothing more than figments and nightmares, a status quo they intend to keep. It is for this reason that once they’ve fed they seek to destroy the town. Still I find it hard to believe that you could just wipe out a town and not have anyone notice, even a place as remote as Barrow.
Fortunately these little hiccups though don’t detract from the film overall, if horror is you forte and vampires in particular then this definitely is something worth spending an evening watching to enjoy the chills it provokes, not only from the drama but the biting cold and snow as well.
Director: David Slade.
Producers: Sam Raimi & Rob Tapert.
Screenplay by: Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie & Brian Nelson.
Starring: Josh Hartnett (Eban), Melissa George (Stella), Ben Forster (The Stranger), Danny Huston (Marlow), Mark Rendall (Jake) & Mark Boone Jnr (Beau Brower).
Produced by: Ghost House Pictures in association with Dark Horse Entertainment.
Released by: Columbia Pictures.
Running Time: 108 minutes. Rating: MA 15
For those trainspotters out there Steve Niles who was one of the two creators of the graphic novel on which this movie was base as well as being involved in writing the screenplay along with Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson was the guy behind the story of Batman: Gotham County Line which was reviewed here on the Lantern a while back. A little bit of trivia for you.
Events open with an unusual scene, the ocean with various ice floes floating peacefully, in the distance can be seen a ship of some kind either an oil tanker or a container ship and a solitary figure who stands seemingly wistfully glancing out at the ship and the sunset (or is it sunrise) before turning away to face inland. Once his back is to the ship and the ocean he heads onwards into the snow covered wastes looking somewhat worse for wear, this is the Stranger, the harbinger of doom that is fast approaching Barrow. And apart from this first glimpse we don’t see the Stranger again until the drama is a little bit further along in its playing.
From a solitary man walking away from an icy shore the action moves to what can only be described as a crime scene, a dead person badly burnt lies out in the middle of nowhere cell phone clutched in its hand. The two members of the Sheriff’s office Eban and Billy have no idea who the deceased may be, what they were doing out in middle of nowhere so far from what little civilization there is or even a motive for why they were killed. No doubt the person was killed as you just don’t spontaneously combust from a real bad tan…or do you? Being unable to come up with anything concrete the two sheriffs head back to town, the sun is setting and the month long night is slowly starting to drift in. People who don’t intend on staying or heading to the airport and boarding the last flight out bound for less in hospitable climes such as Anchorage or Seattle.
When the sun finally descends beneath the horizon and the darkness covers the land like a funerary shroud then this is when the ‘fun’ begins. The production crew and the actors have done a very good job with this film, I definitely found myself in a state of perpetual edginess with this movie it had a rather eerie feel, almost surreal yet it stuck to what I felt was a well thought out and tight story line though I confess I did think that there were some kinks in it that I’ll get later. As far as vampires go even though these guys where straight out bloodthirsty freaks who seemed to be constantly driven by their thirst they were intelligent and horrific antagonists whose appearance is nothing like the dainty gothic chic of the Lost Boys. The denizens of the darkness are literally feral in looks even though they wear clothing and the accoutrements of everyday life; they are creatures who whilst possessing some degree of intellect, have given themselves over to hunger and bloodlust.
There attack on the township of Barrow has been planned with all the precision of a military campaign and to some extent it succeeds in its objectives. Like a pack of starving wolves who have finally managed to corner a succulent morsel the vampires isolate the township from the outside world then begin to engage in feeding taking their time and making sure of the job. They also prevent the creation of further vampires and thus potential opposition, the leader of the crew orders his minions that once they’ve fed they must separate the head from the corpse so that they will not rise as one of them. This is traditional vampire lore, decapitation kills them stone dead and the feeding of a vampire upon a person can cause the victim to rise as a vampire. Sunlight also has a detrimental effect on them, they cannot handle it and there is one scene where an ultraviolet lamp is employed to some effect as a weapon against the vampires. Unfortunately they’re smart enough to realise that if you shut off the generator powering the lamp you can’t use it any more.
The one thing that puzzled me about this film was the time frame, if the vampires arrived in town as the same as Eban and Billy returning from the crime scene they’d been looking at at the start of the film then they must move incredibly fast, faster than a speeding locomotive almost. Also how did they get to this locale, if we assume that they arrived on the ship the stranger is looking at in the opening scene then what the heck happened to the ship? You certainly don’t see it when Eban and Billy are gazing out on the final sunset on the shoreline (out of camera perhaps?). Then of course there is that charred corpse clutching a cell phone, nothing more is actually said in the film about it and frankly I found myself wondering if it had been a vampire and then even if it had actually been necessary to include it at all. The other thing that nagged at me was the actual origin of these vampires, where did they come from and why did they find it necessary to seemingly roam the world in search of sustenance? Apparently it seems to be a survival thing, the more they keep moving the less likely they are to be spotted by society at large especially when they erase any evidence of their activities. There is a hint that they are fairly old, that they have managed over time to convince society at large that they are nothing more than figments and nightmares, a status quo they intend to keep. It is for this reason that once they’ve fed they seek to destroy the town. Still I find it hard to believe that you could just wipe out a town and not have anyone notice, even a place as remote as Barrow.
Fortunately these little hiccups though don’t detract from the film overall, if horror is you forte and vampires in particular then this definitely is something worth spending an evening watching to enjoy the chills it provokes, not only from the drama but the biting cold and snow as well.
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