I haven't read anything good yet about this long-awaited flick, and it HUUUURTS!

I wanna see it regardless. And shall, today or tomorrow. Hopefully.

If it was good, Josh Hartnett wouldn't be starring in it.

Meooowrrr!!!

Yeah, I want to see it anyway.

I think he's ok, made out of oak, but ok. He'll age into it.

You know, I can't explain why I like this guy - but I do. He always appears onscreen like there's something breakable balanced on his head and he's afraid that any sudden movement will send it crashing to the ground. Maybe because the first thing I saw him in was Black Hawn Down, where he's just great. Maybe playing a real person who was right there on-set gave him a goose; he's never been that good since.

I'll see it too, though. But I'd better not wait 30 days...

When? This movie is coming out now, not in 2034.

I meant age into his oaken persona, not into his role in this movie. But you already knew that.

Twenty-five years from now, Hartnett's features will become Charles Bronson's, and he'll be fine remaking DEATH WISH and all the Bronson canon. There's a resemblance there.

Of course, my understanding is that the events of 30 YEARS OF NIGHT unfold in real time, so my statement works either way.

What? Why are you all looking at me like that?! :P

He likes it! He likes it!

From DVD TALK:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=31032

It's the 28 UP of vampire flicks.

It's a bit unusual to find such a close consensus between Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and that consensus is - mixed.

I just got away from it. It looks nice, some neat zomb... I mean, vampire attacks, but it is very, very stupid. Not The Wicker Man stupid, but really close. Once things get moving there's a while where things are pretty effective, but it's a short while before things go straight to laughable (the minute they show finally show the critters, only to have them start gargling in neo-Russian at each other as they feral vogue around in the swirling snow while making catfaces).

It's too bad, because a lot of the stupid elements could have been tweaked into not-so-stupid directions. I liked an overhead tracking shot of the initial attack, but that aspect was over too soon, switching over to the bunker horror tropes of everyone whispering in their hidey hole and getting in each other's faces.

The weird thing is, it plays like one bad night instead of thirty. They sort of wasted a cool concept by thinking inside a tiny, tiny box. And outright stealing the final scene from another vampire movie. And sorta stealing the protag/antag showdown from an upcoming one.

This one was sort of painful but fun to watch at the same time. Too bad... it coulda been better.

So is this a sequel to that 1985 Twilight Zone episode where the Siberian gulag is being terrorized by vampires?

At the risk of being the dumb guy in the room, I've gotta say I liked it a lot, one of the best new horror movies I've seen in a while.

It's funny, I watched that TZ episode earlier in the year and commented on the similarity between it and the comic book then.

It's getting great reviews at the horror sites, like Fangoria and Dread Central.

I'm hoping to catch it this weekend.

Ha! I mentioned that to a friend just yesterday. I believe it was titled "Red Snow."

I found it really really really really really really stupid. And contrived Really really really really really really stupid and contrived.

MINOR SPOILERS, I SUPPOSE

Believe me, if I were in charge of that vampire operation, Josh Hartnett wouldn't have lasted 30 minutes, let alone 30 days. The dumbest vampires ever, they finally do at the end what they should've done at the start. But then no plot, I guess.

The finale requires you spit up your sense of disbelief, wrap it, and mail it to your Cousin Edna in Boise. And even then they sort of muffed it.

I still found it oddly watchable, for all that. But then again I was/am wiped out after another rough week at my job -- I would've sat through two hours of Marty McKee doing the macarena, when I'm this tired my standards for what amuses me drops rather dramatically. So take that for what it's worth, ie probably not all that much. Still, it's pretty to look at (finale had a bit too much obvious CGI, though) and satisfyingly gory. That aerial shot is really neat, too, not exactly worth seeing the movie for it but if it pops up on You Tube, check it out.

Josh Hartnett isn't "bad", exactly. He isn't "good", either, he's just sort of filling up space, the way he tends to do. As with Jake Gyllenhall and Orlando Bloom, it's impossible to "hate" Hartnett, there's no discernable personality characteristics to react against. I'm just sort of bemused by all three men's level of success -- they all strike me as middle manager types, myself, assistant vice president as a small bank, maybe. However did they get into film? And why do they keep getting hired?

doug

Hey, not so fast. I just got here.

Just got back, and was disappointed, for the reasons listed above and some others.

SPOILERS:
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Particular gripes include the underdeveloped -- not including JH/love interest -- characters. For example, the non-white main character (that's honestly the only way I can think of to describe him) disclosing at the end that his family had died in a car accident. I get that the movie wants you to care about him to increase the drama of the upcoming beheading, but all I could think was "Wha?" It's a little late in the game for this kind of ploy.

I may have missed something (I didn't), but they make a big deal of how far away the Utility Building was from their current location. But when the decision is made to trek to the building, there is no trek. They're just there.

The dumb vampire thing bothered me most when JH served as a decoy by running through main street yelling and wacking shit with an ax, and all of them converge on him. Eventually, the whole vampire trait of craning their necks and screaming got silly. And the secondary vampires were silly-looking, especially the long-haired one that got a lot of screen time in the last act. What does having them speak a made-up language bring to their characters?

I had no problem with JH. I thought that his character's situation (beat-down, recently dumped, stuck in darkness for the next 30 days) matched what he's capable of in terms of his hang-dog acting style. The relationship between he and his ex I thought was handled well. There were a couple of little moments where they share looks, or watch each other in action in this new context, where I understood the history between them.

I was thinking going in that the movie had a great concept, and if in a worst case scenario they simply plagiarized the best elements of THE THING and NOTLD, it would be worth a look. But other than a desolate snowscape, and a lead vampire that reminded me of the initial zombie in NOTLD, it just seems like a missed opportunity.

Heh... that crossed my mind. At other times, he sorta looked like Lon Chaney, Sr.

Interestingly, even my complaints are different.

I guess the closest to a point of agreement is that I thought the timeline seemed off or at least not to correlate well with the events. I didn't think it conveyed the passage of time, or as noted, events.

I also thought the feel of a several hour day after which the sun set and the sun never rose in any manner for exactly 30 days after which the sun rose for another several hour day seemed not to mesh up with how I understood the coming of winter to work... subsequent research tells me that my feeling was right.

I also couldn't help note that I was in a town in Alaska with no Native people. I've not actually been to Alaska, but I've known people from Alaska or who lived there for some period or other and the racial makeup seemed vastly out of step of my understanding of the state's makeup. Again, subsequent research bears out that Barrow is, in fact, mostly Natives.

All of that said, once the story was cooking, I was totally hooked and no longer thinking about whether this, that or the other made sense or not, I was just caught up in the characters and what was happening to them.

Perhaps like the Dawn of the Dead remake, I'll like it less and less upon revisiting, either by watching or even just considering. As it goes, I thought it was a tighter and more nerve-wracking ride than that was in the first place, though.

Sure, sure, you mock me now, but which of us is out $12? Good thing I ain't one 'a those "told you so" kinda gents! :D

$5.75 at a matinee today.

Put me in with the disappointed kids. I certainly didn't hate the film, but I definitely didn't like it, for many reasons already stated in previous posts.

Josh Hartnett was actually one of the stronger elements, and I don't normally defend him. This is the first time I've actually bought him in an adult role. Maybe it's that he's finally starting to age a little? When I saw him as the sheriff, I didn't think "He looks like a kid." Melissa George didn't really do much for me, nor was she given a whole lot to do, though I will say that she has to have a lock on the lead role if they ever do THE MARGAUX HEMINGWAY STORY.

The vampires were just silly. Irritatingly silly. I like Danny Huston's work as an actor, but his attempts to be menacing failed completely. He just looked confused and dumbstruck most of the time. The language was ineffective, and the shrieking got really old really quick. Again...not scary, just irritating.

And speaking of "not scary, just irritating," when will filmmakers learn that suspense isn't generated by quick cuts, jump cuts, skipping frames, and cinematography that looks like the handheld operator is having out-of-control muscle spasms? This film gave me the kind of headache that I usually get after a 3-D movie. It went away shortly after I got outside the theater, but again...not scary, just irritating.

And, need I even address it? Too much CGI. I've accepted that it's here to stay, but I'm still going to complain about it.

All that griping aside, I did like Hartnett's performance and there were some scattered effective moments here and there, like the sense of pending doom that director David Slade builds in the opening 20 or so minutes (the cell phones, the dogs, Ben Foster playing yet another psycho). But, being as this is a vampire movie, it should've gotten BETTER when the vampires showed up.

I also found that humming some droning, monotonous, John Carpenter synth music to myself during much of the film made it seem better. But I shouldn't have to do that.

Pretty much agree with the general consensus - lackluster with some good moments. Funny thing was that I was going to review the final script here when it got into my hands earlier in the year and then decided against it - as it turns out, my very first criticism would have been "doesn't convey the passage of time realistically".

And that's really a problem because the movie is not just reaching for a gritty realism (instead of a light "comic horror" tone), but the passage of time and survival in a cold setting are of paramount importance. I swear, there was a moment in the script where I was left believing that a "sneaking & hiding" advancement down a street somehow took 8 days to complete. In the actual film, this shows up as:

SPOILERS

girl and child hiding under a car, sunrise is presumably (by dialogue) at least 12 hours (if not 24 hours) away, town is on fire - this situation is untenable (they'll freeze), hero chooses dire action, walks out to confront monsters, defeats leader in fist fight (always unsatisfying element of action horror - supernatural enemies defeated by physical means - in the end, all you had to do was figure out a way to punch his brain out of his head!) and then, the sun is rising...so, what, 12 hours passed during those events! really?

And, as noted previous, sunrise and sunset during the "midnight sun" seasonal times don't work that way up north, its a progression of increasing/decreasing darkness during which the sun recedes or advances below the horizon, so the first day of sunlight means the sun skims over the horizon for a short period before descending again (IE - you've got a 20 hour night instead of a 24 hour one).

And what was the vampire's plan anyway, other than killing everyone? They wait until the last possible second and then what, hide themselves away in an ice cave? Did the rest of them just disappear into mist ("should I go after them?" uh, how?), and if they can do that, why didn't they do it at anytime earlier.

In fact, why wasn't their first action after the initial mass slaughter simply to walk around tearing the doors off of every house and trashing any generators they found. That would have taken, what, 10 days tops if that (they don't have to sleep and cold means nothing to them) and then they could have taken out every survivor who was now driven out of hiding by cold. How did they survive for so long if they are so stupid?

Why does a blood coating remain slick and liquid (instead of frozen and unclotted) for 20-odd days on the face of a non heat-generating creature walking around in subzero temperature. And, boy, that spilled oil was flowing pretty quickly in the cold as well.

Opposed to some previous quotes, Hartnett struck me as too young for the role. And that "blank stare / Keanu Reeve's" acting style doesn't do his baby-face shtick any favors, either. Also opposed, I thought the look of the vampires was effective (I liked the teeth design especially). I completely agree that the sharpness of digital photography (in which images never blur and are always have definitive, sharp contrast lines) makes quick action very jerky and hard to follow, especially on the big screen.

I know that's lots of complaints, but I felt a quite good chance at a solid film was squandered here by lack of effort. It wants to be gritty and seriously real, but doesn't want to put the work into answering the questions raised by the real world setting and plot.

if so, was "Red Snow" a sequel to that Al Milgrom (I think it was) story in some late 70's issue of CREEPY magazine about workers on an arctic oil rig fending off vampires during their own "30 days of night"?

SPOILERS

Absolutely. Or, why didn't they just burn the town down after aerial attack scene?

What was their plan, anyway? After the first, er, feast the number of prey has gone down pretty dramatically, right? Why are they sticking around? Why don't they go after some other town up there in the middle of nowhere? How were they going to get away? That ship we see in the beginning? Why does it take their leader until day 29 to get a sense of urgency about his situation?

It's irritating to have to ask these sorts of questions -- I'm not usually the person who cares overmuch about plot holes and the like. But this movie is much like 28 WEEKS LATER in that respect -- it wants the gritty feel of realism without, y'know, being actually realistic (ie, plausible, or even coherent).

doug

That's not down to digital photography - 30 DAYS is 35mm. The over-sharpness is Brothers Scott-style 'shutter shenanigans' compounded by digitally-crushed contrast. I got pretty tired of it myself, especially as director David Slade shows a sure hand in matters of tone and performance, if not logic or nuance.

He could have better captured some well-executed gags and made some visual grace notes resonate more by simply pulling back a bit in his set-ups, allowing the compositions to really land.

I had this same complaint with his first film HARD CANDY (along with some deeper thematic ones) - the visual design is very strong (if a bit slick), but he tends to undercut the work done in front of the camera with the work done behind it.

I liked the comic book this was based on, but the movie was booooring for a lot of the reasons people have noted above. Here's my review in case anyone's interested:

http://www.nysun.com/article/64905

Two things really annoyed me, however. Barrow, Alaska is a town with 4,683 people in it, not 100 as the movie would have you believe. Seeing the vamps take out a couple of thousand folks would have instantly made this a better movie rather than seeing them kill a couple of dozen people and then loiter at the end of a street for 27 days. (and I loved that title card, "27 days later." Rarely have I laughed out loud so much in a movie as in this film)

Also, Barrow is 22% white and 57% Native Alaskan. So what version of Barrow were we seeing in 30 DAYS OF NIGHT? The racially pure version? This kind of crap is just flat-out racist and it astonishes me that in 2007 no one involved in this production thought that maybe having more Native Alaskan extras, or at least more ethnically diverse extras, might have been a good thing to do. Don't worry, I still don't expect non-white actors in lead roles, I'm not that crazy.

What also freaked me out is how positive the fan press has been about this movie. WTF? These guys have seen all the horror movies that 30 DAYS plunders so shouldn't they be bored of more of the same by now? Oh, wait, they're the fan press. Right - they just like the same junk, over and over. I can't think of any other explanation except to assume that fan reviewers are simply bad at their self-appointed jobs.

I'm just loving that Grady's review is in the New York Sun.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh... it burns, it burns!

Yeah, the lack of natives bugs me more and more as time goes on. It could be almost forgivable for their not to be any among the leads, since any specific grouping of people with specific relationships is not always the same ethnic breakdown as the population as a whole... although with the breakdown of the population as a whole being what it is, and the relationships contained being what they are, it doesn't manage actually forgivable. But the utter lack of Natives among the extras doesn't make the tiniest amount of sense, especially since wouldn't they be the most likely to stay when everyone skipped town for the month?

On that count I can cut 'em some slack... I would think that casting for Native Alaskans in New Zealand would have been a bigger chore than making the movie itself.

I got to see it last night and I enjoyed it with some reservations. I concur with a lot of the criticisms already noted but fundamentally it was a bit flat. It should have been a bit more suspenseful given the premise but the scripting was so unimaginative there was little real tension generated in the siege. Stumbling from one set piece to another was all the script offered but at least many of these sequences were entertaining enough - and gory too. I got a real kick out of the lead vampire's uncanny resemblance to PET SHOP BOY'S lead singer Neil Tennant! (second PSB reference on Mobius in as many weeks!)

Not much replay value though - the only thing that'd get me to spring for a DVD would be an unrated version with some added value.

Victor