30 Days of Night

I've never been  a huge fan of vampire movies; the Anne Rice vamps are too mopey, the Twilight ones are too teen-friendly.  Even when Hollywood went back to basics with Bram Stoker's Dracula and got the incredible Gary Oldman to play the title role, it was underwhelming and bizarrely oversexed.  Even the Blade movies, which succeed as action flicks, fail by making vampires stupid rave kids.  Don't even get me started on the Underworld trilogy.  The vampire, as a cinema monster, has lost its effect.  It is no longer the stuff of horror, but a metaphor for undying love.

And that's a steaming pile of crap.  Vampires should be scary.  They drink blood to live, ferchrissakes!  They are unnatural abominations that take joy in the pain they cause.  In 30 Days of Night, Hollywood finally got the vampire right.

Based on the comic book miniseries of the same name, this story takes place in Barrow, Alaska.  Barrow is so close to the Arctic Circle that the town has one month out of the year where the sun does not rise at all.  Hence the movie title.  Not surprisingly, many of the townsfolk leave for the month, because missing daylight can make people go a little crazy sometimes.  In fact, the town does not sell alcohol during that month to keep the troubles to a minimum.  A relative few remain behind, including the sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), the surly town snowplow driver, Beau (Mark Boone Junior), and assorted townsfolk.  This year, Eben's estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George), also happens to get stuck in town after the annual exodus; a storm is heading toward Barrow, and she manages to wreck her car on the way to the last flight out of the area.  She's not the only visitor, either.  A strange, hoarse, dirty man (Ben Foster) appears on the first night, coincidentally the same night when all the town's cell phones have been stolen and burned,  and all the town's dogs have been killed.  This stranger is soon taken into custody by Eben and Stella for acting crazy in the town diner, but he just laughs at them, claiming that death is coming to Barrow.  The power goes out, so Eben and Stella investigate, only to find that the telecommunications/power center for the town has been sabotaged and the operator killed.

So far, the vampires haven't really been seen yet.  They are fast blurs in the shadows, and they are messy; you can tell where they have been because there's usually a headless corpse and a circle of blood-stained snow.  Then they attack, and you get your first look at them.  They speak a guttural foreign language, possibly an ancient one, so their dialogue has subtitles.  Their eyes are wide and entirely black.  They are pale, yes, but they are monstrous; their fingernails are claw-like, their noses elongated, and their teeth are all sharp.  These aren't the type of vampires that feed on you by leaving two fang marks behind, they tear out your whole throat.  There is no mistaking that these are vampires, and they have come to kill the residents of Barrow. 

Predictably, the human population in Barrow takes a swift nose dive after the vampires move in.  While there are two or three visually distinctive vamps, there is a clear leader, played by Danny Huston, that is commanding the rest.  Under his leadership, all communications have been lost, and all transportation has been disabled.  Still, a few survivors remain, including Eben and Stella.  They manage to sneak into a house that has a hidden attic, where they wait until they come up with a plan: the people of Barrow deliberately live there, so they know the cold like no others, and they can use that to their advantage and fight back.

As far as the acting goes, it's decent, with a couple of particularly awesome performances.  I found it noteworthy that I didn't dislike Josh Hartnett for a change.  Melissa George is okay, but not extraordinary.  This is probably the most heroic role I have seen Mark Boone Junior play; he usually is cast as a corrupt cop or a sleazeball.  Ben Foster once again takes a bit part and makes it memorable; you can argue that he overacts, but I love seeing him take boring roles and making them distinct characters.  Most of the vampires do little in the acting department, save tilt their heads and hiss.  Danny Huston, though, is terrifying.  He's basically the only vampire that speaks, and his makeup, combined with his inhuman mannerisms and his croaking voice, combine to make him the best vampire I can remember. 

I really liked the creative choices that director David Slade made with this film.  The first draft of the script was written by the comic's writer, Steve Niles; Slade made the choice to have his screenwriter from Hard Candy, Brian Nelson, do the rewrite.  Basically, they chose to make the script less over-the-top and more scary, and yet still remain basically true to the comic.  That is so smart, I wish they did this with all comic book movies: have a comic guy write the script that captures the feeling of the source comic books and have a screenwriter make changes so it works better on film.  It's a very simple concept that comic movies rarely follow.  And the vampire language?  That was totally a Slade/Nelson idea.  Visually, the film is surprisingly detail-oriented.  Beards grow with appropriate speed, chapped lips get worse over time, and the survivors look hungrier and dirtier as the film progresses.  The direction isn't flawless; the acting is only decent and the scenes where the survivors hide should have been claustrophobic.  Luckily, the sheer scariness of the vampires makes up for those not-quite-awesome attributes.

From a writing perspective, the story stays pretty true to the comic book.  There are some differences, but nothing major.  In fact, some of the changes are for the better, like the invention of the vampire language.  Still, the writing isn't great.  The plot is kind of predictable and there are some scenes that you just know will happen eventually, if you bother to think about it.  For instance, there has to be a scene where we get to see someone start to transform from human to vampire.  It's obvious, really, but the pace was brisk enough to keep me immersed in the moment, so I didn't think ahead.  That sort of pacing should be common in movies, but too often is overlooked, so I am grateful for its presence in this film.

The more I think about 30 Days of Night, the less impressed I am with it. I've seen it three or four times, and this happens every time I analyze it. It's not a bad movie, by any means. It just has a lot of things that aren't objectively great about it. But then I watch it again, and its awesomeness is renewed for me. There is something in this movie (probably scary vampires, if I had to guess) that satisfies me in a very basic way, and it is immune to any cliches or mediocre performances this film may contain. The important thing is that it has vampires, and they do not suck. And that makes me smile.

Daybreakers

Let's assume that the inevitable vampire apocalypse happens in a few years.  What would that world look like?  According to Daybreakers, surprisingly similar to today.  In the year 2019, the world has become overwhelmingly populated with vampires; vampirism has spread like a pandemic, infecting almost the entire human population.  Aside from the streets being empty during the day, though, things appear much as they do now.  There's still TV, vampires drive cars, drink coffee (with sugar and blood), and eat normal stuff.  They just happen to catch fire and explode in the sun.  With vampires being so much like their human selves, it is not surprising that they are running through their most precious natural resource: human blood.  Yes, it is a subtle allegory.  The number of "wild" humans is almost nonexistent and, even with human farms (a term that is not used in the movie, but totally should have been), the supply of human blood will run out in a matter of days.

So, what's the big deal?  There are lots of animals that bleed.  Unfortunately, human blood is the only blood that can keep vampires from turning into monsters.  With extended periods of human blood starvation, normal human-looking vamps begin to change; they become paler, their ears become pointed, they lose the ability to speak, their hands become claws, and they grow wings.  Basically, they end up looking like Nosferatu with wings.

Ethan Hawke's character is a vampire hematologist (Hilarious!  Aren't they all amateur hematologists?) that is trying to create a human blood substitute for the vampire population.  So far, his best result has led to his vampire subject exploding.  And that, apparently, was progress.  Hawke works for Sam Neill's company; Neill wants to farm humans out for their blood.  Why he is funding Hawke's work when he clearly just wants human blood, I don't know.  They kind of explain this (the general population gets the substitute, while the rich pay for the good stuff), but Neill later claims this was a lie.  Whatever.  Hawke happens to hate being a vampire.  He doesn't want to die, but he has been abstaining from human blood for a while, drinking only pig's blood.  He accidentally encounters the human resistance and meets Willem Dafoe's character, a  human that was once a vampire.  Together, they work to find a cure to vampirism...but will anyone want it?

As far as vampire movies go, this is a solid entry into the genre.  It's smarter than a lot of vampire movies and I liked the pseduo-science that went into the script.  Hawke's work with Dafoe was interesting, if a little silly, and followed a moderately logical stream of thought.  Basically, the sun starts a vampire's heart beating, but it increases too fast, causing their body heat to increase, eventually lighting on fire.  The explosions aren't explained.  Still, that's not a terrible idea, so writers/directors Michael and Paul Spierig deserve some recognition for trying to make vampirism sound scientific.  I liked a lot of little touches in the movie.  I liked that vampires can buy cars that have darkened windows and digital video cameras so they can drive in the daylight.  I like that they don't only drink blood, but it is an important part of their diet.  I really liked that this movie explained the more monstrous style of vampires; you don't usually see the scary vampires in the same movie with human-ish vampires.  A lot of thought went into the production for the lifestyle of vampires, and it really comes through in the details of this film.

That said, this movie could have used more attention to the script.  To give you an idea of the poor choices made in this movie, Willem Dafoe sings a few lines of Elvis Presley's "Burning Love."  Yes, it's awkward.  There are other things that just don't make sense.  Sam Neill has a human daughter that is captured.  He has her turned into a vampire against her will, despite knowing how close they all are to starvation.  Not exactly father of the year material.  There is a scene where humans are traveling great distances to reach a supposedly safe hiding spot for humans, but they decide to travel at night.  Maybe I have more military training (I have seen several war movies) than the Spierig brothers, but that just strikes me as stupid to a fault.  Should they travel through empty streets during the day, or travel at night, when vampires are active?  Tough call.  That sort of random stupidity is all too common in this movie and really keeps it from being genuinely good.

The acting is solid, despite a largely foreign cast.  Ethan Hawke apparently combs his hair back only when he's a vampire, but is fine aside from that.  Willem Dafoe is Willem Dafoe; he's not winning over anyone with this performance, but he is typically solid and over-the-top at the same time.  Sam Neill does a good job with this villainous turn; he does not appear to like acting in American movies much, but it's always nice to see him pop up. Claudia Karvan, Jay Laga'aia, and Michael Dorman turn in respectable supporting performances, but nobody really stands out.  As far as direction goes, the Spierig brothers seem competent, but I think directing is just their way of getting their screenplays to the big screen.

Daybreakers has an interesting concept with a lot of good detail, but the story allows a lot of stupid things to happen.  I'll give the Spierig brothers kudos for trying to make a smart vampire movie, but they don't succeed here.