30 Days of Night: The Review

Written by Steve Niles ,and first published in 2002, 30 days of night tells the story of the town of Barrow, alaska, as it settles down for the 30 days of night the town goes under, being in the artic circle. The sun will not be seen for a month and a group of vampires have become aware of this and choose to use this to the full advantage to feed.
The film opens with a large boat, possibly a whaler, frozen in place amongst the ice and the camera pans back from that to show a man in poor condition who has taken a lifeboat and rowed to shore. as the sleepy northern town settles in for the month the dogs are all killed, the cell phones are all stolen and burnt adn the helicopter is taken out of comission. Then just as they learn they are trapt the vampires move in.
Right off the bat i must say that personally i wasnt frightened once. Though many in the cinema jumped and in fact after a scene were a vampiric little girl is beheaded with an axe many ran from the cinema. Am i just desensitized?, quite possibly. i know i chose to see this over saw 4 as i dont see that as scary, just cheap exploitation cinema. I telling you this just in case i make the movie come off as boring, which it most certainly was not, i just did not personally find it scary. So just keep that in mind as you read on.
The people i viewed the film with had mixed reactions, some felt that it opened with too slow a start up to the plot proper, others felt it ended to quickly. However all were in agreement that this was superior to 28 days later. and as shocked as i am to say this, im inclined to agree.
to get to that point ive got to start with the camerawork, which was inconsistently superb. between every run of the mill horror shot there was vast wide shots of the snowy wastes and a fantastic arial shot pointing directly down for a good minute, travelling over the town as you saw the chaos in a top down way. following no character ,you would just see vamprires crowd around a person, the spark of gunfire ect. and later another shot of the town, still, with piles fo red and gore on the snow were the remains of what used to be a human lay and no signs of life. a third and final example was a woman, walking through the town the camera low, looking up at her, with it close focused, adn all you could see was the blurred black outline of vampires cralwing along the rooftops, stalking her.

In short .camerawork a little more special than your average friday night horror film.
The plot however was a little simple, not bad, just one of those plots that theres no other way they could have done it. its ironic that before it was made into a comic, this was an idea niles submitted as a movie plot but was deemed to gimmicky at the turn of the century. the only major problems i have was the fact that a few questions were left unanswered, like were did the old man go?, though you dont begin to ask these questions till after the movie has finished so it doesnt disrupt the viewing experience in any way. it was nice to see a faithful ending akin to the comic book one in an adaption for once.
The origional score was virtually unnoticable, but had a good synchronicity with the action ,or lack thereof, taking place on screen. however this was mostly due to the booming surround sound of the theatre experience, and when viewed on dvd at home the same might not be said.
The acting ranges from extras in buffy to extras in dawn of the dead. whilst each actor gave it there all the characters themselves all came off as typical horror movie staples, for example the "lets get out of here and run and some of us will make it" thats been a staple since legendary bastard "harry cooper" from the night of the living dead. This may in part be why i didnt jump once. the actors do good jobs, but you never get convinced there doing anything but acting. I want to be drawn in by the sotry and be shocked into thinking the vmapire might lean over the back my chair and bite my throat out. but this key facotr remains lacking. you have isolation, a formiddable threat vastly superior to the protagonists, no help is coming and its in alaska in the 30 days of night, in principle you have a damn scary movie, however in practice this remains lakcing, the occasional jumps but to be honest i was scared more in resident evil 3: exctinction.
Keep in mind what i said at the start though, just becuase I did not find it scary does not a bad film make it. the story was good, the action was almsot nonstop and it never had a "okay, i can go and miss this and have a wizz" moment. This is one major factor in why i found this superior to 28 days later, another enemies with contagious blood horror movie, in that the last half is utterly forgettable cliche'. wereas in night it was ,at times, a little predictable. but hey its a vampire movie, some staples and cliches are there for a reason to allow the plot to work. also as i said you dont think of any of this during the viewing, only after. when vieing this in a cinema you will have a good 2 hours of solid nonstop entertainement that, wether it will become your all time favourite horror of the last 7 years, or just a so-so one off viewing, i dont think anyone will be dissapointed by this movie.

i give 30 days of night a solid [8/10]