Barrow, Alaska. The last sunset before the 30 days of darkness is about to arrive, but someone is sabotaging all means of transport and communication that connect Barrow to the rest of the world. As soon as the long night arrives, a group of hungry vampires assaults the town and begins to decimate the population. The few survivors, cut off from the world, take refuge in an attic and try to resist until the next, distant, dawn.
The vampire is one of the oldest and most famous figures in the horror imagination. Cinema has celebrated this fascinating and disturbing archetype of seduction and evil in numerous films and through multiple incarnations, transforming the pale bloodsucker from a nightmare to a true icon of classic imagination.
After the great wave of vampires on celluloid that characterized the 1990s, with the alternation of noble and fascinating young men of evil ("Dracula of Bram Stoker"; "Interview with the Vampire") and rough and monstrous creatures of the night ("From Dusk Till Dawn"; "Vampires"), vampire cinema has taken a sharp turn that has dangerously contaminated it with more unrestrained action (the "Blade" and "Underworld" sagas), reducing the number of themed films produced in recent years. However, ten years after what could be considered the last great vampire film, namely the underrated "Vampires" by John Carpenter, a new film finally arrives destined to become a small classic of the genre: "30 Days of Night".
Produced by Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert's Ghost House Pictures, "30 Days of Night" is the cinematic adaptation of a graphic novel by Steve Niles (text) and Ben Templesmith (art), who were also involved in the making of this film as screenwriter the first, and art director the second. Niles and Templesmith's "30 Days of Night" quickly earned the title of "cult", thanks to the unsettling and fierce characterization of the vampires and especially for the simple but original plot. The film, directed by a David Slade ("Hard Candy") in great form, essentially reproduces the same characteristics of the comic, smoothing out just a few narrative elements, and giving the vampire genre a great horror film of terror, cruelty, and adrenaline.
The idea of setting a vampire horror in Alaska is as simple as it is brilliant, allowing the use of one of the most famous characteristics of the vampire, namely the repulsion to sunlight, without too many frills and script stumbles.
In a cold and hostile place where the sun does not rise for 30 days, there is really something to be afraid of if a pack of hungry bloodsuckers decides to feast, making humans nothing more than vile dishes for a rich dinner. The true stars of this film are indeed the monsters, cruel and fierce as they have rarely appeared, incapable of feeling even the slightest human emotion; fast and lethal war machines that express themselves in an unknown language and emit terrifying sounds to communicate and scare their prey. They act like animals, like a pack of wolves led by an "alpha member" who appears as both strength and weakness of the group itself.
Contrasting this absurd threat is a group of helpless but united humans, ordinary people who are caught while performing their daily activities. Among them stands out as leader a young sheriff, played by a convincing Josh Hartnett ("The Faculty"; "Black Dahlia"), and his ex-wife Melissa George ("Amityville Horror"; "Turistas") who finds herself facing the horror a bit by chance and a bit by destiny.
Much of the credit for "30 Days of Night", in addition to the effective subject, goes to the direction of Slade, who manages to give the film a very tight pace and an appealing staging in every single shot: he moves with ease from convulsive and nervous editing choices to long moments of visual quiet and stasis, giving the film an aura of epicness almost Carpenterian. And Carpenter is indeed the clearest
inspirer of the style and atmospheres of "30 Days of Night", making it easily possible to identify references to "Assault on Precinct 13" (the siege situation), to "The Thing" (the snowy setting, the dogs as first victims, and the underlying nihilism), and above all to "Vampires" for the look and modus vivendi/operandi of the monsters.
The more gruesome aspect of the story is not left in the background, providing the splatter enthusiast with a series of gruesome feasts and fierce decapitations that spare no one, making sure that the white blanket of snow covering the streets and roofs of Barrow is quickly contaminated by the red of human blood.
"30 Days of Night" is a definitely excellent film, probably it forcefully inserts itself among the best vampire films ever made. In reality, one can notice some carelessness in the screenplay, which abuses narrative ellipses, but in front of a spectacle that will hardly disappoint the genre enthusiast, one can also turn a blind eye.
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