Movie Review: 30 Days of Night (2007)

The movie stars Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Mark Rendall and Ben Foster.

I remember seeing this movie when it first came out on DVD several years ago but didn't remember much about it. So, when my wife and I came across it on one of our movie channels a couple nights ago, we ended up watching it again. As it turns out, there's a reason why I didn't remember it. The movie isn't very good.

The premise of this movie is actually a pretty good one and the film did have some real potential. In particular, I liked the isolated nature of their Alaskan town. Escape wasn't as simple as getting in a car and driving away. They actually needed to fly out and the airport was closed. Plus, the fact the vampires can move about freely throughout the day as well as the night definitely added the potential for extra suspense and action.

The problem with this movie is it never quite takes advantage of that potential and, because of that, it is actually quite dull. This is because the vampires, for all their advantages, actually move quite slowly. The heroes had plenty of time to run around town as needed and, on the rare occasions when they were actually confronted by the blood-sucking monsters, they seemed to have no real problem outrunning them.

And, that's not even mentioning the fact the vampires seemed to be very casual about their hunt. Rather than searching the houses and flushing out their prey, which would have been easy in such a small town, especially since it was a fairly large group of vampires, they seemed content to just wait and, on occasion, try to trick the survivors.

In fact, the only reason there was any action at all in this movie was the surviving group seemed to be quite stupid. Instead of remaining in a well-hidden attic or barricading themselves in the general store and waiting out the final couple of days, they continually choose to try to move between the buildings without any real indication about why they think one building is safer than the others (especially since, again, the vampires aren't even making a serious effort to search the buildings).

I'm also not a big fan of the ending. It was, admittedly, a little unexpected. But, at the same time, it was also dragged out a bit too much, effectively reducing the impact. I have, in the past, overlooked a weak ending when the rest of the movie was good enough to make up for it. That, however, was not the case this time and the movie really needed a stronger finish.

It's a movie that had a real opportunity to be a good action/horror film. But, a lack of activity and weak execution in general prevented this film from achieving that. It's not awful. However, it's also not overly memorable.

My Grade: C