Andrea does 40 Days and 40 Nigh–I mean 30 DAYS OF NIGHT with Josh Hartnett

By Andrea Baylis

                              For the girls: Josh Hartnett looking cute all rosy cheeked and bundled up
                              For the boys: bloodthirsty vampires (but no naked chicks or beer)
                              For the ladies: a hint of a romance gone south
                              For the dudes: an ax and a couple other fun big boy toys

I confess, I had been wanting to see this movie for a while. Even as a female, I find gory horror flicks greatly entertaining. The cheesier the better is usually my mantra. This coming from the woman who recently purchased Re-Animator. Granted, I don’t usually find much terrifying about ‘scary’ movies but the prosthetics, CG effects and blood spraying mayhem elements usually please me enough.

Plot: B

Hi Trent Reznor!… Oh sorry, Jesus, I thought you were Trent… Oh sorry, Mike Binder, I thought you were Jesus.

The setting for 30 Days of Night is Barrow, Alaska, which is also the northernmost town in the U.S. In Josh Hartnett’s Barrow, the town is losing two-thirds of its population because, as the title indicates, they are about to head into a month-long darkness. You know, that Arctic Circle thing. Conveniently enough for the plot of the movie, Barrow is cutoff from the world during this 30-day period: no roads, no planes, nada. A creepy stranger also burns cellphones and kills all the sled dogs. In regular slasher movies if the dumb blonde goes to investigate the weird ‘noise’ she invariably dies a wickedly awesome death: garden shears through the brain, plucked-out eyeballs, beheading, tossed into the wood chipper– you get what I’m saying. Similarly, if the electricity is cut, people will also die…and soon. Such is the case in this movie. They are so screwed. Game on. Even Hartnett and his pretty flyboys from Pearl Harbor can’t save this one. That’s right, a band of rogue vampires has invaded Barrow and they are thirsty. Really thirsty. Like 4 big Gatorades for a hangover thirsty.

During the next 100 minutes or so the vampires proceed to attack, kill and ‘turn’ otherwise regular law-abiding snow bunnies into burbling heaps of ground beef. (For the gore fanatics, there is an adequate amount of blood in this movie and a few creative death scenes.) In typical hero fashion, Hartnett who is playing the town Sheriff and local hottie,manages to wrangle some lone survivors together to wait it out. The ‘let’s not get eaten’ plan soon takes effect. And so begins the saga of 30 Days of Night.

Casting: C-
I have never found Hartnett particularly interesting in anything but perhaps that’s just me. However, the actor who plays the mysterious stranger (Ben Foster) tends to play stuff really intense. I’m into that. He was also Russell Crowe’s sidekick in 3:10 to Yuma in which I thought he was great and very believable. Again, bringing the intense thing. Foster’s character disappears not long into the movie but if he was on screen longer, this grade would have improved.

Not wishing to carry any ethnic authenticity, the casting team for this movie cast about 98% Caucasian actors. Alaska is a place I have never seen but one day, I would like to gothere. Even so, I know that the majority of the Alaskan population (and certainly that far north) is native. Translation: NOT white. Even the band of strange-tongued vampires are totally white and they ain’t no Eskimos. The one legitimate-looking Alaskan guy bites it with an ax courtesy of Hartnett. Yep, Our Hero becomes a killer. After it is revealed that the Alaskan dude has been ‘bitten,’ and he drivels on in a ho-hum speech about him not being able to kill himself in a previous attempt, Hartnett takes him to a private room to have his way with him. Not in a male-prison-don’t-drop-the-soap kind of way but more of an Off With His Head kind of way. And so ends the brown portion of the movie.

Aaaaaaaw. Fwozy Beard.

The Vampires: B+
I retract part of what I mentioned about the vampires. Their skin is of alabaster, but that isn’t all. They also have a catlike appearance with odd upturned eyes. A few of them are reminiscent of the Catlady of New York, Jocelyn Wildenstein. Dude, creepy. Ask the Google. The vampires have big vacant black eyes and small pointy teeth perfect for flesh-tearing. Romantic, isn’t it? These creatures of the night also wander the streets with blood-covered faces, shrieking high-pitched wails and eating their way down Main Street. With mad rabbit-hopping skills and superhuman strength, the vampires also seem to be impervious to the cold temperatures as they require no coats or appropriate winterwear. In Alaska. At night. One vampiress who meets a rather swell demise fades off into that sweet goodnight wearing nothing more than a flowy organza print dress and a pair of angry teen goth boots. Their poor bloodthirsty Mommies must worry they’ll catch cold. I hope they are keeping in touch. All in all though, the baddies just look badass.

The Ending: D+
Without giving away too much plot reveal I will say that the ending sucked. The big action finale pretty much has a ‘damned it they do, damned if they don’t’ sort of thing going on. And well, what Hartnett’s character chooses to do is not something I would ever consider as an option. In fact, the last minute or so of the movie had me laughing. It is meant to be a sweet and tender moment (going back to that romance thing) but man oh man, what a crapfest. I demand big explosions or more blood or more people dying.

Final: C+
If for nothing more than the cool vampires, watch this movie.

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