Non-Martial Arts Movie: 30 Days of Night

 

This post has nothing to do with martial arts.  I am being up front so anyone not interested won’t waste their time.  I like going to movies, I don’t get to do so very often as I have a young daughter.  That said, on Friday I went to see 30 Days of Night.  Anyone who owns a T.V. knows that this is a movie where a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town above the Arctic Circle when the sun stays set for 30 days.  It was an interesting concept.  I am a junkie for these action vampire/ werewolf movies.  They are junk (mostly) but for me they are fun.  I sat and watched: Underworld, Underworld: Evolution, Van Helsing, Blade, Blade II, Blade III, John Carpenter’s Vampires, Dusk til Dawn, Dusk til Dawn III (not 2 I have some standards – not many though).  Back to the point, what did I think of 30 Days of Night?  Not bad, really not bad.  It really could have been a lot worse.

This movie is pretty gritty.  A lot of movies like to glamorize the vampires, it is almost as if they are portraying decadent nobles in some Louis XIV backdrop who just happen to drink blood.  Well in this version they are monsters.  The brutality and violence is their nature.  There are no crazy vampire prophesy, no ancient vampire werewolf war, no super vampire hunters … this movie is about predators (vampires) and prey (humans).  Also, the vampire superstition is removed (no crosses, no running water, no garlic, no stakes).  The only thing that works on this version is sun and removing the head from the body (maybe fire too, but it was hard to tell exactly).

So the vampires come to town as the sun sets before the next sunrise 30 days later.  The town is slaughtered by the vampires in brutal fashion and the survivors engage in 30 days of cat and mouse.  They mostly hide from the vampires.  So although this is an action movie there is a lot of suspense.  A lot of things are glossed over in the movie and some of the decisions don’t make much sense on the part of the survivors.  No one ever thought of Old Man’s Jenkins snowmobiles or any other such get out of town schemes.  But the story is about people surviving 30 days under siege by vampires so I will forgive this.   But generally, the movie is about people running and then hiding and then running and then hiding.  There is some fighting, but not much.  The vampires are vampires after all and they usually win.  The early part of the movie shows what happens when people stand and fight.  There are a couple of instances of human v. vampire fighting through the movie but  it is more about guile and luck.  The Evil Martial Artist would not have fared well that is for sure.  I am not sure if a kiai or proper hip rotation would have helped.  The fights that happened were usually very one sided and quite short. 

The movie doesn’t feel as much like a comic book as 300did.  Josh Harnett does a good job, I am not familiar with Melissa George but she was good as well.  I am not sure if they did it on purpose but everyone was pale.  They all had that Alaska look.  I am not sure if this was editing or  if they kept the cast out of the Sun for 3 months prior to the filming.  Anyway, I liked it.  Vampires chasing people, people run and hide, people turn on each other and engage in other self destructive activities, end with two fight sequences (that is the movie).  It has a feel that is similar to Pitch Black, monsters in the dark that are difficult to see.  So anyone interested in a decent vampire movie that has more grit and brutality than most of the genre check it out.