That Darn Tundra

Creepy Nordic Vampires tear flesh in rehab time
by Morgan P Salvo

I always have a problem with movies that take themselves so darn serious that the heaps of loopholes in the stories that they are trying so desperately to mask become overtly transparent. And so it goes in 30 Days of Night, a deadly serious saga about a buncha do-gooders in the furthest city north in Alaska, plagued by Arctic, Slavic, vicious, vampire-zombie psychos as soon as the sun goes down for…ummm…30 days. It is based on a very cool and creepy graphic novel that I am only familiar with by title and a few pictures.
Be that as it may, when one lets go of the “how comes” and “why did they do that” thought patterns, it morphs into a kinda cool movie.
Now, the beginning is slow and hints at soap opera crap between the two leads Eben(Josh Hartnett),Stella (Melissa George) but picks up steam (or is it frost?) when darkness falls and all the real trouble begins. There are a few initial killings to let the audience know how it’s done and then there is a free-for-all slaughter that is actually depicted very nicely from an aerial view. Let me tellya blood never looked so good in the snow…
But then the loophole factor takes hold, like when it skips to Day 7, then Day 18, then Day 28 with not much going on in between to satisfy our curiosity as to why this is happening. Sure there are a few ravenous, blood sucking/chewing scenes to keep us happy, but the overall factor as to the existence and the stamina of the remaining survivors is always in question. There were times when it took on the “night of the living dead” fiasco of the antagonist vs. the protagonist as to where the remaining survivors should hole up, but that was short lived. I was hoping for a well-written, almost stage play to emerge once they got situated - that would have made it way more interesting, with more claustrophobic tension and dramatic interaction. But instead they seemed to be able to move whenever they wanted to via caterpillars, flares, bear traps, guns, ultra violet rays and white-out snow storms. I couldn’t figure out why the creatures couldn’t tell where they were hiding, if they could “smell Blood” but then again I didn’t write the damn thing.
I had two favorite scenes…one was after the sheriff, Eben has killed a friend/zombie-vampire of his at the swing set and the way the blood-spurting body rested against the swing juxtaposed with the head in the snow, the sheriff looking haggard and sad. The other one was it has maybe THE best axe decapitations in history. Look for it.
And then there’s Danny Huston in a role I could finally tolerate him in, who pops up as the head honcho vampire, speaking in evil pop noises and ancient semi-Russian/Romanian accents sounding sort of like the demon cave dwellers in The Descent went to grade school…

The grumbling alien sounds in the background were cool tripping back and forth in stereo. The gore was absolutely top notch. The ghouls were some of the best looking ever, hitting the mark of that ancient, East European descent and kind of simian all at the same time. Creepy.
This movie also runs the gamut of every heroic western from High Noon to the Wild Bunch, but with zombie-vampires thrown in. Don’t let the blood-gushing, brain exploding, and shooting guts fool you, there is sentiment, sensitivity and an underlying love story cloaked in ice, snow and blood. Although the stilted dialogue suffers, the action is really quite good, even if it is stolen from the remake of the Dawn of the Dead school of energetic-frenetic-quick-animated-movement to make it hyper-realistic but all that does is make me aware of CG.

There was plenty that I liked. A lot of scares - shock ones, where someone or something bursts out of nowhere. I always know I’m in for a treat when Mark Boone Jr. shows up in a movie and it’s a bonus when he does some actual heroics, since he’s usually the creep. Another added note because, yes I am that guy that actually sits through the credits, was that Tim Rutili from Califone was one of many that worked on the score…
Over all I think it achieved what it set out to do make a supremely creepy, gory vampire movie in the vast unknown and desolate/helpless region where night rules the day. Too bad it turns out to be all about big macho heroics and “love will conquer all” crap when the vicious blood suckers that look like Nosferatu on crack will return no matter what.
What confounds the situation in this movie is when it keeps itself SO serious that you just wish that the action would take over in such a way that it would almost give in to humor. One glaring point is that none of the surviving combatants ever seem cold enough. And just what are those darn walking dead anyways? They seem to possess all the traits of vampires but with the zombie turn over time frame.
At one point Eben says when they are trying to figure out what is happening, “I don’t care what they are or where they came from, I just want to know how to deal with them.” Kind of sums up my feelings leaving the theatre—

30 Days of Night
starring Josh Hartnett,Melissa George, Danny Huston,Ben Foster,Mark Boone Junior
directed byDavid Slade
 3 1/2 stars