30 Days of Night

Well, what to say… I like vampire films. In fact, with the possible exception of vampire bats when applied to my own specific hairdo, I roughly like vampire-everything.
Vampires, as a psychological archetype or an evolutionary mental exercise, are massively interesting creatures. And every vampire novel or movie sets up its own vampire back-story, and ideas behind it. Part of the charm of watching a vampire movie for me is figuring out how they stack up to other vampires, given what we are told in any story.

Dracula was able to walk in daylight according to Bram Stoker, but Bela Lugosi would have burned horribly in the same situation. The Hunger's Miriam and John Blaylock had no problem with daylight either, and lacked fangs as well, but drank blood nonetheless, with the aid of a little knife secreted in a necklace. (An idea re-used in the badly homoerotic The Brotherhood) The Hunger, by the way, also has the strange distinction of being a very elegant movie about two people who are clearly and undoubtedly vampires, yet the word “vampire” is never used or seemingly considered.

That said, almost all vampire movies or novels have to exist in an internal universe where-in there exist no other vampire movies or novels, but there is an abundance of arcane text about same, because, as a rule, vampires target fringe groups, for the tasty drug-laced blood and the lack of uproar over a couple of missing people, yet nobody ever immediately jumps to the conclusion of undead fangy stalkage.

Now I know vampire fan-dom is a little more widespread among my circle of friends than some other groups of people, but I know that as soon as the sucked-dry corpses of urban outdoorsmen start showing up under Amsterdam’s bridges with two puncture marks on their necks, the first thing somebody will say would be: “euh, maybe it’s a vampire” as a joke if not the first sketchy lines on a psychological profile.
But no, vampires are always the last possible refuge of the well-thinking character, and then only after we have seen several instances of turning to dust, glowing red eyes, massive fangs, and turning into bats/wolfs or otherwise creepy animals.
Of course, I realize movies would sell a lot less well if they consisted of one victim, a victim’s friend who says “people, it’s a vampire”, other potential victims stocking up on garlic, crucifixes and the like, and a defeated vampire scuttling off into the moonset within the first five minutes of filming, and thus there has to be a certain tension, a moment of discovery, and somewhat of a hunt to allow for all the product placement that a modern movie needs to stay alive. This is also one of the reasons why vampire ideas keep changing with every new movie and every new book, because if established vampire-detergent always works, there is no tension.

Still, there’d be more tension than there was in 30 Days of Night, the first of two vampire movies to hit Dutch cinemas in the coming period. Now I am not expecting particularly much of the second one, but it has to be better than this exercise in dual sided stupidity.
Some spoilers ahead, by the way.

The idea of a vampire troupe hounding a small town waaay up North is not a bad one in its own right, and as such a good premise for a vampire movie. The town Barrow, setting of this little piece, apparently has no sun for a set period every year, during which most of the town moves to sunnier (or sunny, at all) climes elsewhere, and only a skeleton crew of law-officers and suchlike maintaining vigil in the dark of sunless days. So far, so good. During this period, the vampires decide attack and obliterate the town. Good plan, no light to burn the lily-white skin, reduced visuals for the human meatsicles, all nice and ready for the pickings.

So what’s wrong? Well, stupidity is wrong, for one. And ugly vampires, also wrong (but slightly forgivable). And more stupidity.

These vampires are smart enough o hatch a plan like this, are incredibly fast, know how humans work well enough to set bait and try to trap them into coming out, but no when in the thirty days except for the absolute last day do they start setting fire to possible hiding places.
Foolish things.
Once more it is proven it is a good thing I personally am not an undead scourge on human society, cause y’all’d’be fucked.
If it were me leading an intrepid band of undead explorers, the first thing I do is take as many humans out as possible, as is done in the movie as well, good. Then, during the first night, when the remaining humans have gone to ground hiding, I start setting fire to the houses. This will mean that any humans left inside will run out pretty swiftly, ready for the taking.
Considering the fact that there are only a couple of hundred houses in town, to about 25 vampires, this ensures that the whole town will be burned to the ground, bled dry and fed upon within about 4 days of the given 30 days of darkness. Given the fact we are told over the course of the movie that there are about 4 or 5 more towns nearby that are also completely dark, this means you can be back on your sun-blocked boat before day 25 and undo your belt for a good bloody burp.

But no, Vamps decide to wait with the burning until day 30. Why? No idea. Meanwhile they barely get to eat, and they also spectacularly fail to find about 30 hiding survivors. Vampire idiots.

Do the humans do better? Well, yes, but a) barely and b) only because of the aforementioned vampire stupidity. If you are fighting a vampire, and it is conclusively shown that only beheading will work, would you not start beheading them? I would. But no. You’d apparently continue trying to bring them down by pillow-fighting them, snowballing them, trying unsuccessfully to burn them, whatever. So they have to hide out on someone’s attic, with no food or water, and they still manage to not only survive, but come out looking chipper and in some cases remarkably well-shaven.
And don’t start up about the fact they can melt snow for drinking water. True as that may be, it takes MASSIVE amounts of snow for even a little bit of useful water, and considering there are about 9 people there, this would be a 24 hour job, that nobody is doing. Also, there just plain isn’t enough snow to do this without being noticed by anything paying attention.

There are a lot of moments in this movie that are just plain stupid, or barely understandable. Does this make 30 Days of Night a bad movie? In my opinion: yes. Was it an enjoyable-for its stupidity-movie? In my opinion, yes again. It is worthy of seeing for two real reasons: 1) the movie’s premise is well thought up and executed, if a little bit shaky, and 2) the sheer pleasure of picking it apart. The tension is build well in some rare spots, but mostly underdone by the obvious attempts at sorry comic relief.

Stripes at 11110, for 30.

Grtz,
Kevin