30 DAYS OF NIGHT

Director: David Slade
Stars: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Manu Bennett
Year: 2007
Rating: R

Seeking the romanticized, beautiful, and often forelorn vampires that populate the novels (and films) of Anne Rice? Or maybe the sleek, sexy, and darkly erotic fangbearers you can find in films like the Underworld or Blade series of films?

Well, throw those ideas out the window, because in 30 Days of Night the vampires are savage, bloodthirsty creatures of the night; animals preying on the slower, dumber and tastier animals known as humans.

Josh Hartnett plays Sheriff Eben Oleson, the keeper of law and order in the tiny Alaskan town of Barstow. Melissa George is his estranged fire-marshall wife Stella, who's going from town to town in the remote Alaskan wilderness on inspections, making Barstow her final stop before flying out of the area for the season (for the upcoming month of darkness, most of the residents leave the town, except those working the pipeline, and their families). As the film opens, a lone figure walks across the snowy wilderness toward Barstow, evidently leaving behind him a ship that's traveled as far as it can go in the icy water. As most of Barstow's citizenry leaves town for the month on this day (this is the last day of sunlight for the next thirty days), this creepy, dirty stranger (an almost unrecognizable Ben Foster) gets closer and closer to Barstow... and you can sense something really bad is going to happen. Sure enough, soon Sheriff Oleson has more work on his hands than he can handle - as all the cell phones in town are stolen and destroyed, the only sled dogs in town are killed off in a bloody massace ... and Barstow's only helicopter - the only mode of transportation the city has, once the nearby airport's shut down - is vandalized and disabled. When the power and internet are also cut off, leaving the town of Barstow completely cut off from the outside world, with their only lights running on generators - the deaths begin and Eben Oleson (as well as Stella, who missed the last flight out) realizes that things are completely out of control - and that they have thirty days of night in which to fight off a band of vampires that seem determined to kill off anyone left in the city ... usually in the bloodiest, most painful way possible.

Danny Huston is the leader of the vampire gang that invades Barstow, and as Marlow he's absolutely chilling. The vampires seem imported directly from Eastern Europe, and their origin or why they've chosen Barstow in particular is never covered in the film. In fact, one issue I do have with the movie is that none of the characters ever really feels fully fleshed-out. You still care about them when the carnage starts ... just probably not as deeply as you should. Hartnett is fine as a small-town sheriff trying to deal with something way beyond his scope or knowledge, and George as Stella keeps up with him just fine. Manu Bennett is great as the sheriff's deputy, and Ben Foster turns in an excellent performance as the creepy, Renfield-like character who comes to Barstow ahead of the vampires, to put the town out of commission for them. The film looks great in every way, from the snowy desolation of the town to the speed and viciousness with which the vampires move and attack. And if you can suspend your disbelief and buy into some of the more unbelievable aspects of the plot ...

It's actually a pretty good vampire flick. Based on a series of graphic novels, 30 Days of Night is frenetic, scary, bloody, and a nice change of pace from the kind of vampires you've seen in films of late. The residents left alive here have to alternate between trying to hide and trying to fight ... but the ultimate challenge is just trying to stay alive for thirty days, until the sun rises again. How they do so (or don't do so) makes for a fun, violent, and pretty spooky film - one that stayed on my mind, creeping along the edges, for a few days after I'd seen it. And to me, that's the sign of a pretty good horror flick. ***1/2 - Reel Cool-Reel Awesome