Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
I've been reading comic books for over half of my life at this point. Not as long as Rish, perhaps, but long enough that I sometimes think I know a thing or two about them. Even so, I had never heard of 30 Days of Night until a friend pointed it out and said that it was one of the only comics she enjoyed (the other being Lenore). I did my best to convince her there were others out there and that she should look into them. She, with far less effort, convinced me to check out Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's little vampire book.
Barrow, Alaska, is the northernmost town in the United States and every winter for 30 days, the sun doesn't rise. The town mostly empties, but there are a few hardy folk that wait out the long night. This year, however, a group of vampires has decided that this kind of endless darkness ought to be used to their advantage. They descend on the town and start to kill everyone who remained behind.
The departures from the original comics are mostly incidental and don't change either the tone or the feel of the book in translating it to the movie. The two main characters, Eben (as played by Josh Hartnett) and Stella (as played by Melissa George) are separated in the movie, rather than happily married. This provides a little extra grist for the screenplay, but really didn't substantially change the character dynamic. Marlow give the speech about burning the town down rather than V, who doesn't even show up in the movie. And then there are lots of filler moments added primarily to lengthen the whole thing. In spite of the differences, though, I still felt like the movie was pretty representative of the original.
Josh Hartnett was good, as was Melissa George. I really liked seeing Amber Sainsbury again, even though it wasn't until after the movie that I realized she had been the super hot bad girl on Hex. I had the same problem with Ben Foster, who played the gloriously creepy stranger that set up the town for the impending vampire invasion.
The setting and cinematography were pretty fantastic too. No one draws quite like Ben Templesmith and making a movie that looks like his art was something I thought you couldn't do. But they managed to catch the bleakness, the strangeness, and the cold that Templesmith put into the original art. The movie looked good. It was dark and people weren't as pretty as Hollywood sometimes wants to make them. Which I really appreciated. That kind of detail enhances movies more than I think some directors are aware.
As vampire movies go, it was very good. They don't mess around with vampire mythology in this much and the vampires are just animals when they should be. In fact, for once, the vampires were so clearly the bad guys and not just some oppressive class of society. It's been a long time since I saw something quite so definitive. I really enjoyed the movie (in spite of a few moments at the end that sort of undermined the bleakness of the tale) and recommend it to vampire movie fans everywhere.
Posted: October 21, 2007

Total Skulls: 16

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?