A decent performer at the box office due to its fortunate pre-Halloween opening date even with its middling critical response, 30 Days of Night arrives for the first time on DVD.

The film opens in the town of Barrow, Alaska which is one of the northernmost towns in the world and has a phenomenon every year where they are without sun for 30 days straight.  The townspeople are getting ready for this to occur.  Most of them actually leave the town during the 30 days but some do stay behind including the sheriff Eben Olsen (Josh Hartnett).  Those that stay behind are completely isolated and cut-off from the outside world.

Eben’s soon-to-be-ex-wife Stella (Melissa George) misses the last plane out and is stuck as well.  A stranger (Ben Foster) comes into town and is arrested by Eben on suspicion of doing some crazy things about town (someone stole most of the cell phones in town and burned them and has killed almost all of the dogs).  He warns of some very bad things to come, telling Eben that he and everyone else who stayed behind will be dead very soon.

As the town goes dark for the first of the thirty days, a group of vampires descends on the town and starts massacring all that are left.  These vampires are like animals, just feasting without any semblance of feeling or other intentions.  They are monstrous looking creatures who communicate briefly with only shrieks and wails.  It doesn’t take Eben long to realize they are completely overmatched and with no way to contact anyone from the outside world he takes the very small group of survivors into hiding.  They just try and survive the thirty days by hiding and dodging the creatures as best they can.     

CRITIQUE

30 Days of Night has a very intriguing premise, is nicely set-up in mood and tone, has some striking visuals, the vampires are effectively creepy, and the acting is adequate, yet the picture is severely let down by poor direction and decision making after the brilliant beginning. 

Once the vampires descend and massacre most of the people, the rest of the film (the majority of the film) is spent with the survivors trying to survive and director David Slade does a horrible job at conveying the sense of time passing by, the layout of the town and set pieces, and the danger that each character faces during their excursions around town which completely drains away the tension that should be involved in every passing minute.

It just seems like an endless bunch of randomly scattered scenes of some of the survivors getting brutally killed (this film has a ton of blood and gore) or the vampires shrieking back and forth at each other until (we are all of a sudden told) that 3 weeks have gone by.  Then the ending sets up to be something very intriguing and exciting but turns out to be a quick letdown (I mean, I wanted to see a long, exciting battle after all that muddled mess).  It’s a shame that this potentially brilliant premise and set-up didn’t amount to more.

I unfortunately have to lay the blame squarely on director David Slade.  The acting, the visuals, the effects, the tone…they all work great.  But Slade just didn’t put together an exciting, intense and (most importantly) cohesive middle section of the survivors trying to fend of the blood suckers.  And since this part of the film is the majority of its running time, that great beginning and fairly cool ending just do not make up for it.

Furthermore, I never noticed how important it is to lay out the surroundings first before getting into the action.  I mean, I had absolutely no clue where the characters were trying to go, how far that would be, where things were located, how close the vampires were, etc.  This made each character’s excursions out of the hiding spots tension-free because it was just confusing (and the shaky camerawork during these bits made it even more annoying). 

And I still don’t know what to think of Josh Hartnett.  I’ve loved him in some films but in others he’s just dead weight.  And I couldn’t ever get a handle on whether it’s just because those certain films were bad or whether it was him.  Since this film is somewhat mediocre and I thought Hartnett was good but nothing spectacular in it, I’m still left wondering if this guy is a good actor or not.

The rest of the cast is fairly similar:  good, solid work but nothing spectacular or note-worthy.  Ben Foster does his usual wacko shtick which he needs to start toning down so he doesn’t become a one-note baddie in every film he’s in.  Melissa George is alright but instantly forgettable.  And Danny Huston as the lead vampire is fairly scary and evil enough but I wish he could have done more with it.  The rest of the cast only has a handful of lines.    

THE VIDEO

The film is (of course) almost all night scenes so there are some grainy issues with the 2.40:1 widescreen transfer but some of this was intentional.  Besides the scenes with the endless shaky camerawork, you can make out most detail.  It’s a decent transfer.

THE AUDIO

30 Days of Night is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and the presentation is impressive.  You can here every whisper of dialogue clearly and the surround gets a full body workout from the action-heavy scenes.

THE EXTRAS

I wish I was into this film more as there is a bounty of extras on the disc.

First up is an Audio Commentary with Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and producer Rob Tapert.  As much as I love it when the stars take the time to do a commentary track, where the heck is the director?  Tapert is a bit annoying to listen to and he dominates the track.  Every commentary needs its director to flesh out the vision of the film, why they decided to make it and what they think of their finished product.  But when Hartnett gets into it from time to time it’s pretty fun and interesting.  He gets into the film and the horror film genre and even takes some shots at what the film doesn’t do right.

Then there is a huge hour long, multi-part featurette on the making of the film that explores just about every aspect of it including Pre-Production, Building Barrow, The Look, Blood Guts and the Nasty $#@%, Stunts, The Vampires, Night Shoots, and Casting. For fans of the film and even horror genre fans in general this nicely takes you through what it’s like to put together a film like this.

There is also an animated episode of something called Blood +: Episode One which is about twenty minutes of something that has nothing to do with this film at all (weird).

FINAL THOUGHTS

30 Days of Night has a brilliant premise and set-up that is severely let down by the director’s decisions through the long middle section of the film and it never recovers.  The transfer and audio are adequate here and the extras are quite good.