30 Days of Night

Fangs for the memories: Danny Huston chews the scenery (and cast members) in 30 Days of Night.

The action takes place in Barrow,
Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, according to an
on-screen legend, with three-fourths of the burg scramming out of there
annually for a month’s vacation when Barrow loses its sunlight during
the deepest portion of winter. That still leaves about 150 hardy
inhabitants who stick around, like pipeline workers and Sheriff Eban
Oleson (Josh Hartnett), even though a town law states that alcohol is
illegal during the dark month, presumably because hooch would heighten
possible issues of depression. 

Alas, they’re unaware of the master plan
hatched by bloodsucker Marlow (Danny Huston, sporting pitch-black
contact lenses and a thick Germanic accent for the occasion) and
executed by his minions, who intend to feast on the Barrowians and
increase their numbers. For Marlow’s world domination template, he
intends to take over one snowy hamlet at a time—and since the vamps are
already dead, they have all the time in the world. 

A few mainstays of sawtooth cinema are
represented, notably Ben Foster’s casting as a Renfield-type lackey who
manages to destroy most of the townspeople’s cell phones and also
slices up a kennel of sled dogs—all the better to prevent the residents
from seeking outside help. Still, forget about standard solutions such
as garlic, crosses and shoving wooden stakes where the sun don’t shine.
Beheading is the best way to dispatch these nocturnal creatures—if you
can catch them, that is, since they leap from the rooftops to the
ground to chase down their quarry, like Lugosis in running shoes.  

For this inverse on Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia, director David Slade (Hard Candy)
emphasizes a bleak color scheme of blues, blacks and grayish whites,
with splashes of red waking up the palette. Paul Denham Austerberry’s
production design of the nearly vacant town likewise captures a
coffin-like sense of isolation. Indeed, the only real sense of human
warmth is projected by Melissa George’s spunky turn as Stella, Eben’s
estranged wife, who has missed her flight out of Barrow. For once,
Hartnett’s usual moody brooding becomes an asset; viewers can
understand why Stella wants a breakup because of this guy’s failure to
communicate.

Slade has no problem guiding the action
sequences and the moments of crimson carnage, yet he’s more at home
choreographing the flick’s more intimate passages of psychological
torment. At one point the survivors must band in a secret attic and
speak in hushed whispers, just as Anne Frank’s family did 60-odd years
ago. And one late-in-the-game revelation, which concerns a supporting
character and his fateful decision regarding his wife and daughters,
resonates with far more creepiness than the plentiful shots of fanged
fiends grooving to sprays of corpuscles. Effective, sometimes arty, and
with a bittersweet finale, 30 Days of Night is a literal dusk-to-dawn drive-in-style thriller.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s DVD
is letterboxed at 2.40:1, with director Slade using every inch of his
widescreen frame to solid advantage. Extras include an audio commentary
with Hartnett, George and producer Rob Tapert, a fairly engaging chat
that includes Hartnett pinpointing the scenes he worked on while being
sick, as well as getting jet-lagged because of his globetrotting
publicity tour for The Black Dahlia. The first episode of Blood +,
the Adult Swim anime on cable’s Cartoon Network, is also included;
incidentally, SPHE is offering a five-episode DVD edition from the TV
series’ second season on June 17. Eight behind-the-scenes vignettes
totaling 50 minutes round out the package, with information devoted to
casting, stunts and pre-production chores, and comic tidbits on how the
cast and crew endured 33 night shoots (20,000 cups of coffee played a
key role).