Good, But Seems to be Missing a Few Pieces
It was a screenplay first - then, when no one was interested it became a graphic novel, then when everyone was interested it became a screenplay again.... and it was such a clever idea it's a wonder why nobody ever thought of it before. Vampires can't stand sunlight but seem otherwise impervious to weather - what could be a more perfect vacation for a vampire than a town above the arctic circle where the sun doesn't rise for an entire month?
Of course by calling itself '30 Days of Night', the film gives away it's one original idea in the title. The film itself is follows the trend of all the other 2000s vampire films by making vampires fast moving, martial arts using, animalistic grotesqeuries that are pretty much interchangeable with most 2000s werewolves and zombies. The film goes so far as to use the jittery camera with dropped out frames that we've seen in similar high style action-oriented horror films like 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead.
And yet, it seems like there really was a story here - one that likely got left on the cutting room floor in order to make a high-speed action film. There are really very few scenes of exposition, character development or drama. The vampires all speak a foreign language, is it Romanian? Russian? Vampire-ese? We're never told. Clearly there's some back story missing here; Have they done this to any other towns? Why have they never come to this town (Barrow, Alaska) before? And who was their patsy who acts as their advance scout in the beginning of the film? Not only are these questions never answered, but we learn next to nothing about the principals is either. The hero sheriff, Eben, played by Josh Hartnett and the heroine, Stella, played by Melissa George clearly have a past together, but what it was and why they are estranged from one another - again, we never know. Many of the other members of the supporting cast also have some backstory we're missing out on - to the point where, in the last half hour the behaviors of some, if not all of the characters becomes almost incomprehensible. One character even disappears early in the movie only to reappear near the end.
And this is what makes 30 Days of Night so damn frustrating. The part we do get to see - hiding from vampires and fighting vampires - is good stuff! It's like they kept all the plot-driven action sequences of a great movie but took out the rest. Maybe someday someone will release a directors cut or extended cut or something of this movie and it will be remembered as one of the greatest vampire films ever made, but sadly in its present form it is not.
30 Days of Night wants so badly to be The Thing, but with all action and no suspense it falls way short.