Minute44 - Dan Schonhaar

Director: David Slade

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George

Vampires, a film-maker’s dream job in my opinion. You have some hard and fast rules to abide by such as sunlight=death and vampires drink blood. Other than that you pretty much have carte blanche to put your own spin on the vampire legend. Anne Rice made them immune to crosses and garlic but sleeping in coffins was a necessity, Robert Rodriguez made them vulnerable to pretty much all traditional means of killing vampires but made them grotesque monsters rather than evil humans with pointy teeth and pale skin in From Dusk til Dawn. Given this huge scope, you’d think that we would be swimming in extremely good vampire movies… truth is, most of them suck. Out of modern ones, the only ones I’d say were worthy of 3 or more stars were Blade (just the first one) and Interview with a Vampire. And yes, since Blade 3 we’ve had a bit of a drought of vampire flicks making it to the big screen…It’s been all about the zombies. That is until now.

Based on the critically acclaimed graphic novels and directed by David Slade (Hard Candy) comes 30 Days of Night. A small remote town on top of the world is clearing out for nightfall is coming, a night that will last for 30 straight days. But as the majority of the population leave and head south for a month, evil arrives. A band of Vampires, driven out of almost every other place on earth find their heaven, a populated area covered with perpetual dark.

Josh Hartnett stars as Sheriff Evan Oleson, leader of a two-strong police force who stay behind during the month of dark to maintain order amongst the few remaining occupants. His estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) gets stranded in the town when she misses the last flight out. Now, the remaining few must fight for their lives against a seemingly unstoppable evil and survive 30 Days of Night.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here, this movie was awesome! I mean properly good. Don’t get me wrong, the acting wasn’t anything special, it’s not going to win any Oscars but as a full on, balls-to-the-wall vampire horror, it’s a bulls-eye! And the reason is, going back to my opening statements, the writer/director’s own personal take on what vampires should be like. Maybe I enjoyed it so much because Slade’s idea of scary vampires isn’t too different from mine.

These vampires aren’t fooling around. They are truly evil and near unstoppable. The only way they’re going down is by exposure to sunlight or by decapitation… and good luck doing either of those. In most modern Vampire movies there is just too much hope for the humans, too many ways the vampires can be defeated and that is what gives this movie it’s appeal. No light, no hope…. and it’s freezing cold. The only time anyone has come close to this style of vampire was when John Carpenter when he made Vampires but that was ruined by a comedy script, James Woods and Daniel Baldwin.

Special effects were top class, especially the gore effects. I don’t want to give anything away but at one point you see a head removed with an axe in full light with no cut-aways. The makeup for the vampires was just enough too. Their appearance changed when they were near a kill, their features became almost feline, eyes just pools of black.

There are some genuine scares in this bad boy as well, the first few kills made me jump back in my seat. Poor Nat spent most of the film hiding. Seeing the movie on Halloween night made it that little bit more special but to be honest you could see this on Christmas day and still love every, blood-drenched minute.

Verdict: