Put succinctly: One of the top ten vampire films I've ever seen.
As a horror film, I give it four full stars. And from my own perspective, I don't see this as a film for the casual viewer of "scary movies." It's heavily atmospheric, as pervasively dark as the title suggests it would be, and BRUTAL. If horror films are one of your favorite genres, I think it's mandatory that you see 30 Days of Night. The average critical review on Yahoo! Movies is a meager C+ [with the addition of a few more reviews, the average has dropped to a C] but, to give you a point of reference on how much that may truly mean, the average critical grade for Stranger Than Fiction is a B-.
To those planning to see it: Don't expect much in the way of innovation, but expect much in the way of strength of presentation. The tension, I might go as far as saying the dread, created by this film is constant and damn near unrelenting (i.e. basically no levity to ease the mood after about Minute 20). The Hollywood addiction to exhaustive exposition is repudiated, the original music is easily one of the best horror scores I've ever been exposed to, and all the romanticizing of vampires that Anne Rice brought into the genre is absent. If Interview with the Vampire is your standard for a great vampire film, you're not going to like this movie nearly as much as I did. And if you're one of those movie goers who finds horror flicks to be inherently silly or dumb, this film's not going to redeem the genre for you.
(As a side note, I thought Josh Harnett did an excellent job in the lead role. And to think, after I first saw Halloween H20 I hated this guy. But I'll confess now that I think he's becoming a quality actor.)
To sum up with some specific advice:
Aaron Homoya, Perry Chrisitan- Run don't walk to see 30 Days of Night.
Josh Hedges, Amanda Tranbarger- Never watch this movie in your entire life. :)
On an unrelated note, Albus Dumbledore is gay.
Who knew? Apparently J.K. Rowling.
Additional comments:
+I just found out that 30 Days of Night was the #1 movie at the box office this weekend. That's not at all stunning to me seeing how close we are to Halloween. Unfortuantely, I think my statement that "this film is not for the casual horror fan" is about to be invalidated by an army of tweener girls and frat boys.
+I find myself unable to stop thinking about this film over 48 hours after viewing it. Taking a study break, I just read 5 or 6 online reviews of the film (positive and negative) and have found my own opinion to be cemented rather than repudiated or significantly tweeked. Here's a link to the review I think represented by own opinions most closely:
The review is relatively short, but for those who'd appreciate some streamlining and/or wish to avoid potential spoilers, here are some of my favorite "moments" in James Berardenelli's write-up.
" It's a pleasant change of pace to get a vampire movie where the bloodsuckers are allowed to be monsters. You know what I'm talking about - no more of this brooding, tortured soul shit...Too often of late, motion pictures have defanged their vampires, turning them into whiney, pseudo-romantic figures. That's not a mistake made by director David Slade. Finally - a modern vampire movie where audiences sympathize with the victims rather than their attackers. If you think these creature are sexy, you need therapy...
"The premise - providing vampires with a month of sun-free opportunity to wreck havoc - is clever and, if it's not fully realized, at least enough is done with it for 30 Days of Night to represent two hours of solid, gory entertainment. This isn't one of those neutered PG-13 horror movies. There's enough blood and viscera coating the screen to earn the R-rating without things tipping the scales into the "torture porn" category. In many ways, what Slade has wrought here is reminiscent of an amped-up version of a Hammer vampire movie. In fact, Danny Huston [see my next comment] alternates between channeling Christopher Lee and Max Schreck...
"One aspect of 30 Days of Night that's refreshing is that it doesn't require the survivors to have undergone frontal lobotomies in order to move the story forward. Yes, characters occasionally do stupid things, but they're not unreasonably stupid and they don't force members of the audience to fight against the suspension of disbelief gag reflex. I'm not going to claim that the screenplay is either airtight or brilliant, but it is smarter than the average genre entry, and that's a big plus."
+I didn't recognize him at all during 30 Days of Night, but Danny Huston (son of director John Huston) played Marlow- the lead villain one reviewer humorously called primo vampiro. Huston first entered my world in last year's Australia-based western The Propostion. Through the combined testimony of both films, Huston has demonstrated himself to be adept at portraying bone-chilling monsters of two dramatically different types.
+Special Make-Up Effects for the film were done by Gino Acevedo and his team- the same group of make-up artists that worked on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and his remake of King Kong. Quite the change of pace, eh?
No comments:
Post a Comment