30 Days of Night (2007)
There’s been a definite trend in Hollywood these days you may have noticed, and that’s the lack of vampire horror flicks. Despite one or two here and there, and a slew of vampire action flicks if you like horror and you like vampires you’re going to be left in the dust (pun intended). But thankfully director David Slade has come to rescue us. Just in time for that lovely October holiday comes 30 Days of Night.
Based on the comic (excuse me “graphic novel”) written by Steve Niles (who also wrote the screenplay) 30 Day of Night takes place under the premise that up in Alaska there are places that don’t see the sun for literally a month. During the last 24 hours of daylight some strange things start happing around town, and by the time night falls shit hits the fan. From there it’s up to Eben (the town sheriff), and his estranged wife Stella (insert A Streetcar Named Desire joke here) to help keep together a band of fellow townspeople as vampires run amok.
This movie “cuts the crap” as far as the vampires go. They aren’t all pretty, and they aren’t interested in being nice and romantic towards anyone but each other. They kill kill kill and make it vicious. They have nasty teeth and huge claws and are more akin to Nosferatu than Dracula. Oh, and whenever they come on the scene there’s going to be blood spraying. And we all love blood don’t we?
Surprisingly, for being shot in 70 days and pushed out the door there’s surprisingly little “cheese”. The acting is good, the special effects are suprisingly decent (the blood doesn’t look fake!) and the basic premise is sound. Most of the things that happen are what you might expect to happen in that situation, and my only real beef with the film is that the vampires speak in some kind of weird spitty language with bad subtitles. Honestly, I didn’t see this movie coming. I liked it. The movie makes no qualms about it not being an immitation of Interview With A Vampire or whatever the White Wolf RPG of the week is. It’s a somewhat dramatic and horrifying (horrifying not because of jump scares but because… well… you’ll see what you watch it) slasher movie. Buckets of blood! People freaking out! Vampires killing and maiming with absolute freedom! Yay!
And at the same time, it’s all kind of touching. It’s not really a slasher movie, it just happens to have a lot of slashing in it. The real stars are the people.
So really, if you’re going to see one really new horror movie this Halloween, make this one it.