30 Days of Night

I just watched 30 Days of Night, and I really liked it. I'm glad it was good because this was like my 4th attempt to watch the thing. All the copies they seem to have here in Zibo seem to have a messed up sound track that is all crackley. Finally I just downloaded it (arrrr I'm a pirate!). The copy I got was really nice quality too.

The movie is based on a graphic novel/comic book that I'm going to have to pick up because the art looks pretty cool. It's a vampire story set in Alaska. The movie is set in a small isolated Alaskan town that receives no sunlight for a whole month (30 days), and has such harsh winters that for this month most of the towns folk leave (reducing the population from about 500 to 200) before the final sunset. The only communication with the outside world during this month is through phones/internet. There is a single chopper that can still leave in an emergency. Unfortunately for the town just before the winter someone steals and destroys all the cellphones, the helicopter is sabotaged, and all the sled dogs are killed. Eventually, as people start dying all power and phone lines are cut off. The movie then becomes a survival/hunt story following a small group of protagonist (which includes Josh Hartnett as the town sheriff and Melissa George as an ex-flame of Hartnett/fire marshal who gets conveniently stuck in the town before winter). The best part of the movie, however, is the vampires. They are rather different from your traditional vampire in that while they do have the thirst for blood, and seem to share the same strengths and weaknesses of normal vampires,they don't act like your classic Vampire. They aren't the traditional Gothic sex symbols you see them as in most vampire flicks,instead they are far more feral/instinctual and driven almost wholly by their thirst for blood. They seem to have lost most of their humanity with their curse (or affliction what ever you want to call it). They do still think,however,and talk. The main/older vampires seemed to speak Latin or some language like that, while the newly turned ones still spoke English. They also set traps and such for the protagonist further demonstrating that there was a method to their madness, making them that much scarier. The ending will probably be a point of debate to some people, I personally like how they did the final fight/ending, but I can see how some people will find it incredibly cheesy. Remember this was based on a comic book though and it IS a vampire movie at heart (two stereotypically cheezy things) before you get too disappointed.

Now, I'm not saying classic Vampires are lame, but it sure was a nice change of pace. Sometimes Vampires are over glorified in my opinion or made to seem too pretty and nice with some minor (or major) sadistic undertones. This sometimes makes them too human and relateable (well minus the whole blood drinking thing), and while this works for some movies such as underworld where the Vampires are the good guys, it falls short with others. It was good to see truly scary/monster type vampires in 30 days.