30 Days of Night

I’m tired of all this classy award-winning type movies; it is time for a genre picture. Thank you 30 Days of Night. There will be no nominations for this. It may have been a standard vampire flick but it stood out just enough because of its sweet ultra-violence. There is not much else to talk about except blood, axe-wielding, and child decapitations.

Lets get this out of the way as soon as possible. There is a cookie-cutter story for many vampire, zombie, infected, and whatever else type of monster movies. First you introduce the setting; this time it is a crazy northern Alaskan town that goes without sun for a month. Then here come the evil folk; we get the old standby of the vampire just vampires no science to blame here. Once the killings start the plucky band of survivors come together; 30 Days of Night has Josh Hartnett and a bunch of other fodder to be killed. From that point on people are being picked off one by one while the survivors find a way to win the day; this part of the movie is where the extreme violence lifted this above the rest. The ending will include the big showdown and usually a sacrifice; 30 Days of Night included a big showdown and a sacrifice. That was nice of them.

So the story is basic and there is nothing really worth talking about, why doesn’t this movie suck? The creators decided that they were going to push the R rating as far as they could. And since this is America, violence is good and sex is bad. What that means for 30 Days of Night is that there are just numerous scenes that took me by surprise. When the violence starts with dog carcases, I know I’m in for a ride where there will be no shying away from disturbing images. This is taken to another level once Hartnett picks up the axe halfway through the movie. Since it is a small hand-axe and Hartnett isn’t a superhero, each beheading takes multiple swings. Which would be okay except the camera does not turn away. It’s awesome. If that wasn’t good enough, eventually you get the typical kid monster meant to shock you. Well instead of ending it there, the survivors pin this child against the wall and decapitate her onscreen. I nearly lost my mind with that one. There were a bunch of other scenes that were just shot well and were able to build mood without resorting to scare tactics. That especially pleased me because this was David Slade’s follow-up to Hard Candy. I wanted this to at least look good even if it is just a vampire movie. There are only a couple of actors that I want to mention, neither of them being Josh Hartnett. Ben Foster pops up as the first vampire to hit town and he is creepy as hell … again. He is building himself a nice laundry list of characters. The other actor is Danny Huston as the lead vampire. He was able to make his character both funny and menacing even while speaking the weird vampire language. Hey look it’s the chick from the season of Alias that killed the series.

I have no regrets about seeing 30 Days of Night. There may be handfuls of vampire flicks every year, but this one distinguished itself enough to make it worthwhile. They wen that extra mile with the violence and I really appreciated it. Beheadings are always good times.

6 out of 10