30 Days of Night

In my experience, I've found that terrible movies are a lot easier, and a lot more fun to review. This is why I'm reviewing 30 Days of Night while I still have one movie I saw at the film fest on the back burner. I checked on IMDB, and this actually has a 7/10 rating. I am dumbfounded by this. I found nearly no redeeming qualities in 30 Days of Night.

The movie revolves around a group of oils workers, or mine workers, or some other grizzly northern generic wilderness community cliche. In the dead of winter the town is plunged into blackness for a month (hence the name) and is essentially cut off from the rest of the world. This provides perfect pickings for a band of roving vampires. Sound great? Wait, there's more. Josh Hartnett stars as the stony faced sheriff of the town, trying to save as many citizens as he can (as long as they're family or blond).

Need more? How about the obnoxious language the vampires gargle out? Or the painfully rigid dialog. "That cold ain't the weather, that's death approaching." "When man comes up against something he can't destroy, he destroys himself instead." "Mr. and Mrs. Sheriff. So sweet. So helpless against what is coming." It just goes on and on with horribly written dialog being delivered in the most horrible way imaginable.

Ben Foster (whom I praised highly in 3:10 to Yuma) is the worst offender here. His slow southern drawl squeezed out from behind rotten teeth is supposed to be indicative of a vampire. And who is he anyway? He's built up to be a major character, and nothing is ever done with him. This is just one example of the next issue I had with this movie.

Plot holes! Somehow, with 90% of the town being wiped out in the first few days, the 5 or 6 main characters manage to stay hidden and alive for another 25 days? It's almost as if director David Slade had no concept of time. Days fly by without the least attempt to build tension. It jumps from one action filled event, to another weeks later. The characters themselves provide their fair share of holes. I won't get into to it be because it'll give away some spoilers, but suffice it to say that most of what our hero does makes no sense.

I could go on about this, but I think that the bad directing, acting, and writing provide enough examples. It tried to create a similar feeling to that of The Thing, or Alien, making the audience feel isolated and in suspense. Despite these efforts, and the perplexing producing by Sam Raimi, it fails. This is the second vampire movie I saw last week (The first being Netherbeast Inc), and this was by far the worse one. This weekend, however, being the 2007 After Dark Horror Fest. I'm planning to at least attend a few of those, and hopefully will wash this bad horror movie out of my mouth.

0.5/5