If you're planning a trip to Barrow, Alaska anytime soon, heed the words of the Wu-Tang Clan and "Protect Ya Neck."
It's a wonder that no one thought to put vampires above the Arctic Circle before, with the prolonged periods of darkness, but that's exactly where they are in director David Slade's "30 Days of Night," an adaptation of the graphic novel by the same name.
The film centers on Sheriff Eban (played by Josh Hartnett), the law and order of the northernmost town in the U.S., and a band of hearty Alaskans - including his estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George) - trying to survive their yearly month of darkness while a band of vampires ravage their town in a brutal feeding frenzy.
The vampires first send a mysterious stranger (Ben Foster) to disable the town and prepare it for the invasion, a task which includes destroying all forms of transportation and communication with the outside world. After he does this and manages to get himself arrested, the bloodshed begins.
The bloodsuckers in "30 Days" aren't your average Count Draculas. The look that Slade was going for was of some sort of feral beast: taut white skin, deep black eyes, fangs that are a mix of canine and shark and covered in dried blood from head to toe. They dart around the frozen Alaskan landscape and call to each other in squawks that sound like the Budweiser "whazzup" guys sped up.
The only problem is that they aren't remotely scary. Marilyn Manson, whom many of the vampires remarkably resemble, is far more unsettling than these bloodsuckers. The head vampire (Danny Huston), with his sad black eyes and conservative buzz cut - which he smears with blood from a corpse in one of the film's more unnecessary scenes - looks more like someone's tired old grandpa than something that wants to rip off your head and chug the gushing blood.
But rip, gush and drink they do - and these aren't the only verbs in action in "30 Days of Night." The vampires and townspeople (all six that are left after the other 146 who didn't leave for winter are killed) tear, chop, shoot, pounce, bite, shake, squawk, shriek, stomp, cry and whine as blood is spilled on the pristine white snow.
The one verb that best describes the film itself, however, is nowhere near as exciting as any of these: drag. The film, which runs 113 minutes, often feels much closer to the 43,200 that constitutes an actual 30 days.
This film is unapologetically brutal. Within the first 15 minutes, the film features slayings en masse when the vampire envoy uses a blood-spattering knife to kill an entire team of sleigh dogs. Later on when the audience is no longer fazed by random acts of feeding that look like bad make out sessions - the bites are the most brutal hickeys you'll ever see - the violence is stepped up. Eban realizes that removing the vampire's heads will defeat them and grabs an axe. He proceeds to behead foe, friend-turned-foe, friend-very-nearly-turned-foe and one (particularly unsettling) little-girl-turned-foe.
From a technical standpoint, the film is fairly impressive. All of the decapitations, both on- and off-screen, are fully audible. The sound mixing in "30 Days of Night" is its strongest feature; wind whips around the survivors and the darkness is punctuated by gunshots, vampire's shrieks and the screams of their prey. Each decapitation is accompanied by a series of dull thuds and stomach churning gurgles.
Slade's use of close-ups verges on abuse, but it brings a sense of helplessness and claustrophobia to the film. There are a few truly impressive shots, such as an overhead tracking shot down Barrow's main street displaying the carnage in all its glory. Some of the cinematography is chilling, with washed out colors bringing us into the cold darkness, but at other times it emulates "300" (2006), with vampires attacking in stylized slow motion and people struggling through tacky computer-generated snow equally slowly.
While there are some good thrills, most are "gotcha" scares, and there's almost no humor to speak of. "30 Days of Night" takes itself too seriously, and in the end it is not much different than any of its late October horror competition. Ironically enough, it does exactly what real vampires do: it bites.
