Review: ’30 Days of Night’

Zac:

David Slade’s adaptation of the vampire graphic novel quickly becomes mess and while having one or two decent moments, it is for the most part and unmemorable failure.
Josh Hartnett stars as the police chief of a small Alaskan town that doesn’t see the sun for thirty days every winter. As he investigates a series of seemingly random acts of vandalism and violence, something a miss begins to figure in his head, but by then it is too late. Upon arresting a drifter he suspects of the crimes, (the always stellar, and best part of this film, Ben Foster) the drifter begins preaching their demise and how there is nothing that can stop them. ‘Them,’ are a pack of vampires who have come to feast for thirty days on the town that is cut off from the world.
The film from here is just all over the place. The vampires are running around town killing everyone, yet the pack of survivors that matter are just sitting in a diner oblivious to the carnage and vampires outside. They show us streets filled with rampage everywhere, yet Hartnett and Melissa George (his separated wife, wonder if they reform their bond, hmmm?) move from building to building and drive the streets with little to no opposition. Hello continuity problem, and this is just the first of many issues the same as this that crop up throughout the entire picture.
The film has a chance to redeem itself as a whole party of people magically is able to cross the town and successfully hide from the pack of vampires running the streets in a well hidden drop ladder attic. Now the film could have played up the character development, shown the people slowly go crazy with cabin fever, and they touch on this briefly, but instead decide to magically move the party of people who decide to go to another location so we can try and be scarred again by this new locales threat of being unknown.
After a couple of other magic locale transfers, one kind of cool scene in the supermarket, a couple of fallen comrades, and a pretty good scene with a giant tractor and a ready to fight driver, we get to the preposterous finale where
**Spoiler**Hartnett injects himself with Vampire blood to be strong enough to fight, putting a punch through the leading Vampires skull and scaring the rest off. Why don’t they bum rush the fool and then kill the remaining survivors; just horrible. Then Hartnett and George finally realize they love each other and spend their last moment watching the sun rise as Hartnett burns to death from the now deadly light.**End Spoiler**
I mean it is all laughable and how horrible it is and just cements this film as one of the worst from the last year that I saw.
The actors actually don’t do a horrible job and are more or less handicapped by the atrocious exposition laced script that was written towards the intelligence of a three year old. Also, I am curious as to why such a talented actor like Danny Huston took the lead vampire role; just odd choice, though he did bring a little something to the character. The look of Slade’s film is actually pretty good, besides the crappy CGI, outside the last shot which looks pretty solid, and he does some fine work with the camera. Besides that the film glazes over everything, doesn’t explain anything, or even try to get us to care about these characters. I can’t recommend you to see this film as it is a weak horror film that does little to nothing well.

[rating: 1.5/5]