Scan and Pan
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
30 Days of Night
Barrow, Alaska. A town so far north that it's in complete darkness for thirty days every year. A group of vampires led by Marlow (Danny Huston) decide to make a feast of its residents during those thirty days, and so the carnage begins. Can Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) save themselves and the town?
Director David Slade (Hard Candy) delivers impressive visuals and some effective scenes of the town being decimated, but as a whole fails to create much in the way of suspense or emotional connection to the plight of the characters. Never mind vampires draining people of blood, the life's been drained right out of this film. Scenes that are meant to scare the audience are flatly directed. Scenes that are meant to make us care about the characters are uninteresting.
The screenplay credited to Niles, Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), and Brian Nelson (Hard Candy) is generally faithful to the story in the miniseries, but where the source material offered originality and well-realized characters, the screen version is predictable and surprisingly thin on characterization.
Cinematographer Jo Willems (Hard Candy), production designer Paul Denham Austerberry (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), and costume designer Jane Holland (Riverworld) do a remarkable job of translating Templesmith's art onto the big screen. It literally looks like you stepped into the panels of the comic book, right down to the Max Schreck by way of a shark look of the vampires, who are impressively realized with makeup and visual effects. The visuals are the best thing about this film. The discordant score by Brian Reitzell (Stranger Than Fiction) effectively conveys a creepy mood.
The cast is solid. There are no great performances, but no bad ones, either. Besides Hartnett, George, and Huston, the cast includes Ben Foster as a human who does the dirty work of the vampires before the sun sets, Mark Rendall as Eben's teenaged brother, Mark Boone Junior as the rugged loner Beau, Manu Bennett as the deputy sheriff, Megan Franich as one of the vampires, and Amber Sainsbury, Joel Tobeck, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Nathaniel Lees, Craig Hall, and Chic Littlewood as the principal survivors of the first night.
30 Days of Night is visually pleasing and technically well made, but as a dramatic presentation it's all rather anemic. A story about people facing unthinkable horror and trapped in an isolated setting simply shouldn't be this dull.
[2 out of 5 stars]
In 2002, IDW Publishing published a comic book miniseries by writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith that reinvigorated the vampire genre. Unfortunately, the much anticipated film adaptation produced by Sam Raimi (director of the Evil Dead and Spider-Man films) is a big disappointment.
Barrow, Alaska. A town so far north that it's in complete darkness for thirty days every year. A group of vampires led by Marlow (Danny Huston) decide to make a feast of its residents during those thirty days, and so the carnage begins. Can Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) save themselves and the town?
Director David Slade (Hard Candy) delivers impressive visuals and some effective scenes of the town being decimated, but as a whole fails to create much in the way of suspense or emotional connection to the plight of the characters. Never mind vampires draining people of blood, the life's been drained right out of this film. Scenes that are meant to scare the audience are flatly directed. Scenes that are meant to make us care about the characters are uninteresting.
The screenplay credited to Niles, Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), and Brian Nelson (Hard Candy) is generally faithful to the story in the miniseries, but where the source material offered originality and well-realized characters, the screen version is predictable and surprisingly thin on characterization.
Cinematographer Jo Willems (Hard Candy), production designer Paul Denham Austerberry (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), and costume designer Jane Holland (Riverworld) do a remarkable job of translating Templesmith's art onto the big screen. It literally looks like you stepped into the panels of the comic book, right down to the Max Schreck by way of a shark look of the vampires, who are impressively realized with makeup and visual effects. The visuals are the best thing about this film. The discordant score by Brian Reitzell (Stranger Than Fiction) effectively conveys a creepy mood.
The cast is solid. There are no great performances, but no bad ones, either. Besides Hartnett, George, and Huston, the cast includes Ben Foster as a human who does the dirty work of the vampires before the sun sets, Mark Rendall as Eben's teenaged brother, Mark Boone Junior as the rugged loner Beau, Manu Bennett as the deputy sheriff, Megan Franich as one of the vampires, and Amber Sainsbury, Joel Tobeck, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Nathaniel Lees, Craig Hall, and Chic Littlewood as the principal survivors of the first night.
30 Days of Night is visually pleasing and technically well made, but as a dramatic presentation it's all rather anemic. A story about people facing unthinkable horror and trapped in an isolated setting simply shouldn't be this dull.
[2 out of 5 stars]
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