30 Days of Night

“30 Days of Night” is the latest installment in the constantly-evolving vampire-film collection. In this latest installment, a town in Alaska is descended upon during its thirty days of darkness. This small town is hardly prepared for such an infestation, so it’s up to the town’s young sheriff, Eben Oleson, to control the ever-escalating violence. This proves quite a task as these aren’t the vampires of yesteryear. Fast as lightning and with super-strength, one wonders what vampire legend the writers had in mind when penning this movie.

The first area of concern for Christians will most likely be the violence. While it does not approach the nearly unimaginable levels of “Saw III” or many of the other popular torture-porn films, “30 Days of Night” is very gruesome. Vampires constantly use their teeth to rip at their victims throats. The main character is prone to using decapitation as a control method. Machinery is used to rip at the vampires. Necks are broken in graphic fashion on multiple occasions. Characters are impaled. Particularly unsettling are scenes in which the vampires slash at their victims until they decide that their victim has suffered enough torture, at which time they rip into their throats. Characters are shot, run over, beaten, etc. All violent scenes are in no short supply of blood. Also, one of the opening scenes depicts an unseen villain stabbing a dog to death. Later, a gruesome scene is shown in which all the dogs have been mauled.

Aside from the violence, the only concern for most will be the use of harsh language. The f-word is used over ten times, with a few milder profanities throughout. There is also a plot point that involves pot, but no characters are shown using pot. Also, one scene contains some mild sexual dialogue.

Now onto the spiritual side… This film is oddly not concerned with spiritual matters, in spite of its vampire theme. But “30 Days of Night” is more akin to Underworld than Dracula. The only blatantly spiritual scene involves a vampire coming across a helpless victim screaming that there is no one to help her. The vampire asks, “God?” He looks up, looks back at her, shakes his head to say “no,” then murders her.

Morally, this movie is a repulsive. The lead character murders multiple people, each time using some sort of extenuating circumstance to justify his killing. In his favor, the one killing was an attempted mercy killing. Blood and gore are used for entertainment, more than any sort of plot device. A little girl-turned-vampire is used for shock value as this child is decapitated by the leading character.

From an artistic viewpoint, this movie is rather terrible. The plot loses steam less than half-way through the movie, and it really wasn’t that exciting from the start. This isn’t helped by the acting, which goes from average to painful. And even worse are the vampires. I’ve seen scarier creatures in haunted houses. While one or two were genuinely creepy, many were somewhat laughable. The only area that succeeds is the cinematography and editing. The color scheme is perfectly suited to the atmosphere, creating a genuinely chilling environment. The editing is also used to great affect in chase and attack scenes. However, this can’t pull the film out of its awful plot and execution.

The film alternates between being laughable and repulsive. It plays the mindless gore card so often, any perceptive audience member can’t help but feel insulted. As mean-spirited as this movie tends to attempt to be, it’s nearly impossible to take seriously because of how incredibly bad it is. I felt like I was watching what could have been a tense and edgy Steven King film disintegrate into a freshman attempt at horror. It even had the half-wittedness to reference the classic “Dracula” during the film, just reminding the audience of what they could have been at home watching.

Violence: Extreme / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Mild

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