Lifeless '30 Days' bleeds concept dry

"30 Days of Night" bites.
It's so bad that it actually justifies horrible movie-critic puns.
Sure, the premise of the movie - vampires stalking a northern Alaska town in the dead of winter, when the sun won't rise for 30 days - is a great one.
The idea might even be one of the freshest, most exciting developments in the vampire genre since Dracula himself.
And yes, the sight of hideous, beastly vampires of the evil-incarnate "Nosferatu" variety is a whole lot better than some halfwit take on the vampire-as-sex-symbol cliché.
I mean, we've already seen rock star vampires, aristocratic gentleman vampires and other insert-high-status-profession-here vampires. Isn't it about time for some blood-sucking demons?
But that's all "30 Days" has going for it.
Everything else is a formulaic, boring splatterfest complete with exploding heads, missing limbs, decapitations and pools of blood looking less badass than intended on the vast plains of snow.
The movie, based on a graphic novel, fails to deliver any of the visual flair that has made the comic book-movie genre so successful post "Sin City." And without the stunning visuals, all that's left is a bottom-shelf vampire flick.
The plot (predictably) follows a group of survivors who must (predictably) battle the vampires before they are (predictably) eaten one by one. As the town dies, their numbers (predictably) wane, until the final (predictably) heroic showdown.
Add a moral about love and self-sacrifice, so on and so forth.
Then the sun comes up, the lights in the theater come back on and the audience leaves utterly unaffected.
The movie is not scary, and it's not adventurous, but boy, is it unnecessary.
The film's stock characters do their job of dying with gusto.
But the by-the-book approach to horror filmmaking is nothing short of yawn-inducing. And the special effects are nothing special.
The film totally ruins a good premise for the rest of us.
It's a waste, really. Vampires in an arctic settlement, free from the restrictions of the sun. It could have - and should have - been great.
But instead "30 Days" earns nothing more than half-assed puns and vindictive rants all summed up with some smart-alecky line like, "The movie, like its vampires, is soulless. (Get it?) It sucks. (Get it?)"


The Daily Tar Heel, Diversions section, 10/25/07