30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night

My wife and I went to see “Across the Universe”, the new film by Julie Taymor. This film is another in the style of “Moulin Rouge” where a film writer tries to write a musical, so they come up with a story and force someone else’s music into it. The result is the disastrous “Across the Universe”, a film with so little to offer that it comes in a close second to “Moulin Rouge” in the contest for “biggest piece of crap ever.” Other contenders are “Pay it Forward” and “Sin City”.

 

I should have known before going in that the film would stink, simply because Oprah declared that it was “powerful and moving” (or something like that), which are industry code words for “pretentious and sappy”. The film also suffered from its similarities to “Rent” in that both films try to play on our sympathy for a bunch of lazy, drunken bums who have nothing better to do than blame their self-inflicted wounds on the rest of the world. The film was so bad that we snuck across to see “30 Days of Night” which was playing in the next theater over.

 

If you like horror, “30 Days of Night” is worth seeing. It is definitely a modern vampire story. Once upon a time, vampires were sexy. Perhaps Dracula was simply an embodiment of Victorian sexual repression as he flowed across the room with a grace and mesmerizing gaze. This idea was revived in the late twentieth century in “Interview with the Vampire”. Even in “Blade” the vampires have a certain “je ne sais quoi”. The vampires in “30 Days of Night” are not those vampires. They are monsters, plain and simple. They are bloodthirsty ravenous beasts made terrible by human intellect and a callousness which would make Jeffrey Dahmer wince.

 

More after the break…

Eben (Josh Hartnett) is the sheriff of Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, where, once each winter, the sun does not rise for 30 days because they are north of the Arctic Circle. Two-thirds of the population leaves, alcohol is banned, the roads are impassable, and the airport is closed. What would any intelligent vampire think about this arrangement?

 

“BUFFET!”

 

The vampires start by picking off solitary victims and, as the population thins, the slaughter turns wholesale. The few survivors are forced to hide in an attic and try to wait out the invasion. Survivors lose their nerve, and the numbers reduce throughout the month until Eben shows his true colors and what exactly he is willing to sacrifice to save his estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George), and the people he has sworn to protect. In fact, willing self-sacrifice to save others is a repeated theme in this film.

 

The vampires are smart. They are not “dumb-evil”, they are “smart-evil”. They have a plan, and it plays out in a terrifying manner. The vampires systematically destroy any means of rescue before revealing themselves. One young woman is offered her freedom if she acts as bait to draw out other survivors. Eben finds himself in a no-win situation constructed by the vampires as they reveal their end-game. Should he save his wife and doom the other survivors to slaughter, or keep the few townspeople that remain safe while she burns to death? Eben comes up with an interesting solution.

 

This is a gory film. Shotguns and pistols give way to axes and construction equipment as the near-invulnerability of the vampires is demonstrated. In one scene, a seven or eight-year-old vampire needs to be dispatched by holding her to a wall and beheading her with an axe.

 

The acting is solid. Josh Hartnet provides a good center for the cast, and the performance by Mark Boone Jr. is effective. There is only so much room for character in a film where the bill for stage blood takes up a significant portion of the budget, but the cast gives it their all. If you like horror, go see it.

I give “30 Days or Night” 3 ½ out of 5.

I give “Across the Universe” a charitable 1 out of 5.