30 DAYS OF NIGHT

30 Days of Night is a vampire movie based on a graphic novel, its unique selling point ostensibly lies in its setting - an isolated town in the far North of Alaska which is subjected to 30 days of darkness each winter. It's weird that it took vampires so long to realise that somewhere dark would be a good hunting ground, but then given that themir increasing stardom has led vampires to officially emigrate from Transylvania to Hollywood over the last hundred years we can forgive their reluctance to innovate and experiment. The contrast of the snow and blood, the bleak setting and the physical and psychological isolation of the small town provide the perfect backdrop for an edgy scare-fest, with the added bonus of the inspiration of an original graphic novel from which to draw some starkly contrasted imagery (as was the case in Sin City and 300). However, 30 Days of Night proved a huge disappointment. The story build-up was unbearably weak as it lined up the usual array of romance, brotherly love, suppressed sob-stories and accidents waiting to happen. I could even say with no qualms whatsoever that a blind and deaf ape imported from prehistory could watch the first 15 minutes and guess the route the plot would take. In unfolding the plot, the writers made no use whatsoever of the isolation of the townsfolk to draw us into a meaningful narrative, all debates and plot points seemed painfully contrived and rarely (if ever) diverged from tried and tested formulations. The ending was not quite so painful though, and the action, if mildly repetitive, was spiced up by an obese loner turning zombies into mulch with heavy machinery before hilariously failing to blow himself up. But I can't help but think that the hilarity was not fully intentional. To make matters worse, time in the film was totally screwed up. To form a sort of 'countdown to survival day' the number of days since the appearance of the vampires occasionally appears at the bottom of the screen, though it doesn't seem to correspond to events at all. After less than a week vampires are tearing through the town house by house to find survivors, then inexplicably we're in the third week and the survivors remain safely in their hiding place with no evidence of any searching nearby, and certainly not of a skirmish. I for one am not convinced that the vampires spent this time singing around a campfire, nor do I believe that they were hatching their ingenious plot to lure out the survivors using a random child who appears from nowhere to call for help. If that was the case, my prehistoric blind/deaf monkeys could've hatched that plot quicker than these bloodsucking fools. And my gripes don't just end with the plot I'm afraid. The visuals were far from impressive, not terrible, just nowhere near its potential. The director (David Slade, who directed the superb psychological thriller Hard Candy) couldn't seem to decide what he wanted. He forsook long, sweeping shots of the bleak and hopeless surroundings in favour of Michael Mann styled shaky camera work, which really detracted from any sense of being trapped and butchered many of the high-budget battle scenes, yet still tried to keep placing the audience in close quarters with the characters as they were holed up in various hiding places, with the frequent changes in their refuge only detracting further from the tension, rather than adding any new dimensions to the tale. The only saving grace was the occasional overhead shot panning across the town littered with blood and corpses, and the momentary glimpses of graphic-novel-style shots of silhouetted figures against the besieged town - though these were sadly reduced to mere cut shots. As an aside, I also think I should add that with the dialogue and plot as weak as it was, I feel vindicated in bodyswerving any commentary on the acting abilities of the cast, though I will mention that Ben Foster makes a welcome early appearance as a portentous stranger in the mould of the classic Dracula character Renfield. Whilst I really wasn't impressed with the film, most of my complaints stem from disappointment. I liked the idea of revamping the vampire genre a bit with a new setting, and it seemed so perfect that the arctic location could be married with some stark imagery drawn from that newfound film fertiliser, the graphic novel, but instead this film embodied some of the worst Hollywood traits around. The plot was formulaic, the camerawork blandly reliant on pathetic shaky pseudo-realism and the fear factor, far from tapping into the rich potential of the setting, relied heavily on shrieking, high-pitched squeals from vampire and score alike, as well as the classic 'sudden loud noise'. Whilst there was the occasional moment that looked good, or decent fight scene, I really think that this film is a good premise poorly executed.

rating: 2