There are few simple pleasures to beat watching a vampire eating someone’s face off or their would-be victim retaliating with a snowplough and dynamite. Happily, 30 Days Of Night boasts such delightful spectacles in spades. Director David Slade (Hard Candy) and screenwriters Niles and Stuart Beattie have done sterling work with this adaptation of Steve Niles’ and Ben Templesmith’s crunchingly good graphic novel.
There are echoes of John Carpenter’s The Thing – always a welcome allusion – as 30 Days sets its brilliantly simple premise in motion. As the sun sets on Barrow, Alaska, heralding a month of total darkness, a series of disquieting occurrences – the murder of sled dogs, the destruction of mobile phones – sets local Sherriff Eban Olesen (Hartnett, never better) on edge. Before he knows what in tarnation is going on, Eban, his estranged ex-wife (Mellissa George) and a small group of survivors must hold their own against a band of vampires, who, freed from the tyranny of sunlight, can gorge on human flesh until their black hearts are content.
The film discards the internal bloodsucker politics of the comic in favour of neo-western thrills. The fiends may resemble Nosferatu at his first Evanescence gig, but Slade’s film owes as much to Rio Bravo as it does to The Crow. That said, there is plenty for the casual horror fan seeking Hallowe’en thrills. The visceral bumps and brooding atmospherics are delivered with aplomb. Psychological disintegration attends every scene. And I wouldn’t have missed Danny Huston’s undead commander for all the world.