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With the long winter nights beginning to draw in, it seems appropriate to watch a horror movie set in a place where the sun doesn't even rise at all for a month in the middle of winter. 30 Days of Night's plot is of the "I can't believe no-one ever thought of it before" variety: Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, is besieged by vampires during the 30-day midwinter blackout, where, of course, they are not restricted by their usual dawn deadline. The film wastes no time in establishing the bleakness of the setting, beginning on the last day of sunlight before the long night begins. The alien snow-covered surroundings naturally create an eerie atmosphere that has been exploited before in such cinematic milestones as John Carpenter's The Thing, the foreboding mood of which 30 Days of Night seeks to emulate.
Director David Slade, whose first feature was the controversial small-scale drama Hard Candy, brings an effective sense of claustrophobia to proceedings with extensive use of tight close-ups on the actors. Such a technique clearly puts the performances under greater scrutiny, but all the participants are up to the challenge. Few of the characters have any real colour to them, but the premise is the star here; the actors are only plot devices. The sometimes-derided Josh Hartnett is perfectly solid, despite being saddled with a bland sheriff role and a clichéd estranged wife subplot (have a guess whether they patch up their differences by the final reel). Aussie Melissa George - who is almost a horror veteran, having suffered through the remake of The Amityville Horror and the recent Paradise Lost - is the wife in question, and convinces with a flawless American accent (as so many Australian/Kiwi actors seem able to achieve - Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe et al). Several antipodean faces fill out the supporting roles, which is not surprising considering that the film was shot in Auckland, New Zealand. Presumably a fair amount of CG, not to mention fake snow, was involved to create the visuals as the supposedly Alaskan backdrop is pretty seamless.
Slade's propensity for close-ups unfortunately extends to the action scenes too, giving them the familiar jittery, fast-shutter-speed look that has become so favoured and so repetitive of late. Here though, for once, it's not at the expense of gore; 30 Days' 15 certificate is well earned with some brief glimpses of no-holds-barred violence in the later stages. The suspense is sustained effectively for the duration, but the 30-day timeframe is squandered somewhat. Barring the gradually growing beard of the leading man and the days elapsed caption that appears at three points (marking 7, 17 and 27 days), there's little to suggest the passage of time, and the events of the story could all have taken place in a single night. This wastes the film's original hook, but it's far from fatal as this is generally a slick and well-made horror/thriller/western. Yes, that's western. Barrow's location in the middle of nowhere makes it something of a modern frontier town, and the mostly wooden buildings could have come straight out of the Old West. Replace the vampires with horse-riding outlaws and voila, you have Rio Bravo.
The summary
A classy frost-bitten take on the vampire genre. The odd flaw does not detract much from the very well sustained tension.
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