The Metropol Viewing Room presents: 30 Days of Night
by Lori Bowen
When I first saw this back in 2007, I thought it was pretty good for a vampire flick. This is high praise coming from me. I loved the messiness of it, the expression of the pain and torture of being a vampire without all the emo whining that tends to pervade at least American vampire cinema these days, and how no character was made weak to make another character strong.
These vampires are well dressed under layers of caked blood. No bibs or napkins for these folks. Where as the first few films I reviews featured fangless vampires, these vamps have fangs upon fangs with some fangs to spare. More than enough to make up for the other films. They’re also extremely fast, agile, and strong, all things you would see in a typical movie vampire. They don’t fly, though. They arrived in Barrow via a big boat and sent their version of Renfield, an unnamed character played by Ben Foster, to do their dirty day time work: destroying the cell phones and killing all of the sled dogs to isolate the town even further. Once night fell, the vamps took care of the electricity, telephone, and internet as Eben had captured their slave pretty early on.
It’s only gotten better with the second viewing. The effects hold up very well, the story and performances are all top notch, and I really like the score. Aces across the board. However, I have read the trade paper back of the original series and I have to say that while it’s a great adaptation, the book is so much better. They nailed Ben Templesmith’s wonderfully scary design for the vampires; they’re very shark-like with jet black eyes (“...like a doll’s eyes...”) and rows of sharp teeth of varying sizes. each vampire has a distinct look and a distinct design to their teeth and nothing except attitude distinguishes Marlow as the leader.
There is more cinematic 30 Days of Night out there. There were two seasons of webisodes: “Blood Trails” is the first and “Dust to Dust” is the second. Each season totals approximately 30 minutes a piece and can be found on FEARnet.com. Another film is slated to be released in 2010 and it’s called 30 Days of Night: Dark Days. It’s a continuation of Stella’s story. Melissa George will not be reprising the role and I haven’t seen anything as to whether or not the film will be a wide theatrical release or direct-to-DVD, though I’d bet on DVD.
Overall, it’s still pretty damn good for a vampire flick and I highly recommend it.
