30 Days of Night

A Review by Nick Peron

Wait wait wait, why are we, promoters of independent cinema, doing a review of a big budget Hollywood movie? Well shit-mouth, there is a perfectly good answer to that: For those of you who don't know, 30 Days of Night was based on a graphic novel of the same name published by IDW Publishing. IDW, depending on how you look at it (at least around the time 30 Days came out) was an independent comic book company. But then again, if you really want to get picky about it, the title "independent" is a pretty loose term in the comic book industry when in most cases "independent" means "Not published by Marvel or DC Comics"

Usually when somebody takes a comic book and turns it into a movie -- especially when it's an indie title -- something doesn't always quite translate into movie very well. Look at Tank Girl, when they adapted that into a movie they gave it a plot! It makes you wonder just how much nose candy goes around Hollywood for something like that to happen.

So how good or bad was 30 Days of Nigh compared to it's graphic novel inspiration? Did producer Sam Raimi deliver a good movie? Or was it just a pile of shit? That was something I was determined to find out, and since I buy a shit load of comic books I was given a free pass to see a sneak preview of this movie anyway, so I had nothing to lose (not even the fucking 8 bucks they usually charge me at the door)

But first probably the best thing to do right now is to take a closer look at the graphic novel that was the inspiration to this movie itself and then compare it to the film. Sound like fun? Good.

30 Days of Night - The Graphic Novel:

Before they landed the Transformers franchise (after Dreamwave totally screwed the pooch), IDW was a lesser known company -- which other than having to deal with stupid Transformers fans bitching and complaining about what they did to their beloved Generation 1 -- had some moderate success with their various horror titles. The first of these was 30 Days of Night, which was written by Steve Neils and illustrated by Ben Templesmith.

It follows the people living in the town of Barrow, a fictional town in Alaska who usually endure a 30 day period of 24 hour darkness during the winter months. At some point some vampires find out about this and decide to go to the town of Barrow and feast upon all the people who live there. They slowly and methodically cut Barrow off from any form of communication from the outside world and attempt to wipe the town out one person at a time. The only people with balls enough to fight the vampires are Sheriff Eben Olemaun and his wife Stella, and they lead the few survivors on a merry game of survival.

Meanwhile, there is a subplot about a woman from New Orleans sending her son up to Barrow to get photographic proof of the existence of Vampires and one of the vampires himself, an old bastard by the name of Vincenti going up to take a look at what the hell is going on. Vincenti is not impressed and kills the head vampire leading the Barrow slaughter because their activities might alert the living world about the existence of vampires, something that is -- to the long lived elders -- something that they don't want to get out.

Eben injects himself with vampire blood and turns into one of them so he can kick the shit out of Vincenti, some how manages to do so, all the while that dude from New Orleans manages to snap a picture of some vampires. With the head vampire dead the other vampires flee. Eben then watches the sun rise with his wife, slowly disintegrating in it's light finally at peace.

What did I think of the graphic novel? The story is entertaining, but hardly much of a brainstorm. I mean seriously, people have been writing about fucking vampires since the 18th century, and it took until 2002 to come up with a plot that involved vampires going to a part of the world that has a period of extended darkness during the winter months? I mean, you'd figured they got every possible vampire scenario mapped out in popular fiction by now before this one came up. Holy shit. I bet Laurell K. Hamelton is smacking herself in the head with her latest 300 page vampire flop for not coming up with that one first.

That's not to say the story is bad, it's readable, it's entertaining, and it's fun. It has it's spooky moments as well. But it's hardly Shakespeare.

The art work is where this graphic novel really shines. Ben Templesmith. Now here is a fucking artist. It's sad that the comic book industry is smothered with super hero books, because this guy could make a killing if most people who read comics didn't like big muscular guys in tights, but stories with more substance. Every bit of work that I've seen Templesmith do, be it the 30 Days stuff he did for IDW, or Fell at Image Comics (which he did with Warren Ellis, now there's a writer), or even Criminal Macabre for Dark Horse (which he also did with Steve Niels) his art work has been phenomenal.

His art is not clean, it's very gritty, it's sketchy but that adds to the gloomy, horror themed books he usually draws. And I don't care what you think about comic book art, but when your drawing horror comics the sketchier or more rough and dirty you can make your art look the better. I mean look at the work by Estoban Maroto when he was drawing Satana for Marvel back in the 70's, look at Gene Colan's Tomb of Dracula, Neil Adam's work on Deadman and Phantom Stranger, fuck if you want to go back far enough read Tales from the Fucking Crypt my friend. You want good horror stories? You get the artist that can draw shit that looks freaky.

But since the 90's I can tell you there weren't many people pumping out that sort of stuff in the mainstream. No, if you wanted horror, you had to read the god-awful Tits-and-Asses filled sub-superhero bullshit that Brian Pulido was churning out in Chaos! Comics. Thankfully, such is not the case anymore. Horror is making a come back that's just as great as the last great age of horror comics from the 1950's before the comic book code. Why this is, who knows, I figure it's that comic fans are getting sick of the lack of diversity in titles, publishers are more inclined at taking risks with new ideas with the potential of a lucrative movie deal (they did turn 30 Days of Night into a movie, hell the screenplay was in works by the time the limited series was first printed in a graphic novel back in 2003), and to conquer other genres that were currently being dominated from Manga imports from Japan.

So hooray for the return of horror comics, and I'm getting really off topic here, I should stop talking about the graphic novel and talk about the movie which I just so recently seen. So here we go:

30 Days of Night - The Movie:

30 Days of Night has to be the first movie I've gone to see in a theater and was frightened during the course of the film. Unfortunately, it wasn't because of the movie. Which is not to say it's not scary, or has it's fright moments, I'm just not a pussy that jumps during scary parts of movies. Sorry.

No what was the scary thing about going to see the movie was the woman sitting next to me. She was -- I shit you not -- 300 lbs, and smelled of cigarettes and popcorn. It was possibly the most revolting smell ever. She complained about having to turn in her cell phone to security (this was a sneak preview and we are living in the day and age the multimillion dollar film companies don't want to make .5 million less on a film because people in Taiwan want to buy a poorly pirated movie filmed on somebody's fucking camcorder.) Her breathing was the laboured-always-slightly-out-of-breath wheeze of somebody who's diet consists of Export A Green unfiltered cigarettes, Twinkies and Diet Coke. She'd bob her head to any music that played during promo's for the latest shitty albums out by the latest shitty chart toping "musicians", and she'd make a gibbering slobber noise whenever she rammed popcorn into the vast vacuum that was her mouth, it sounded like something H.P. Lovecraft would describe before claiming that the appearance of yon beastie would drive him mad (or go into one of his horrendously racist descriptions of black people) And speaking of her eating popcorn... At one point she manages to deflect a piece of popcorn that ended up landing on my lap. My greatest fear? Watching possibly the greatest vampire movie since John Carpenter's Vampires and having this 300 pound fat-ass having a heart attack, or a stroke, and keeling over on top of me, and as I scream my last screams, her massive bulk crushing my brittle bones, her bowels release and my final vision of the moral world is the avalanche of shit coming towards me like a steaming chocolate tsunami, her sweat pants rupturing under the pressure faster than a New Orleans levy. And that my friends was the scariest thing about going to see this movie.

Thankfully, about 45 minutes into the film when they were doing this wicked aerial shot of vampires pulling people out of their homes and slaughtering them, she (and her grown son, who looks like his natural habitat is possibly a basement computer with the World of Warcraft logo permanently burned into his plasma screen.) left the movie in sheer disgust. Which to me is quite possibly the most extreme case of the pot calling the kettle black I've seen in my entire life.. But I digress, I really should leave the fat woman who was rushing out of the theater to catch up with her important date with her first coronary alone and get onto what I was supposed to be doing: reviewing 30 Days of Night.

What can I say? As far as the plot goes, it mostly follows the graphic novel to a T, there are a few glaring differences in the plot. First of all, none of the vampires speak English. They all speak some ancient language, which the Hot Topic Goths will all try to figure out (Watch it become the biggest fictional language to come out on easy to learn audio cassettes next to Klingon), the whole sub-plot about the woman from New Orleans sending her son up to take vacation photos of the Barrow slaughter is cut completely out of the plot (you know leave the movie open to a sequel, but not make it so obvious incase it's a box office flop), the whole plot line with Vincenti is cut out as well, oh and the characters Eben and Stella go from a happy loving couple trying to survive a vampire slaughter, to a couple going through a divorce trying to survive in a vampire slaughter. I'm going to get into all of these points in more detail here.

The first bit with the vampires speaking another language hardly changes much when you really think about it, however I will point out that there is more dialogue between said vampires in the graphic novel than in the movie. It adds to characterization of these undead fiends, and sure beats panel after panel of nothing to read. The movie shifted most of it's focus from the reason the vampires were up there (except for the basic "Hey it's going to be dark for 30 days!") to focus on the brave struggle of the towns survivors. So if you're looking for in depth character development from the vampires that expands beyond "Hey, I'm going to bite you and drink your fucking blood" you're going to be sorely disappointed.

The sub-plot with the New Orleans vampire specialist and her son are cut completely out of the film. Which if you ask me is a good thing. When I read it in the graphic novel I thought it was pretty fucking lame. It had a point, to "show the world that vampires really exist", and was used as a plot point to make the sequel to the graphic novel (titled Darkest Days) but still pretty lame, because it involved a guy flying over the town in a helicopter and getting blown up. Instead they addressed the concept of vampires being a myth simply by having the characters say they thought vampires exist, and the vampires suggesting at the end of the movie of burning the town to the ground to kill off any survivors (and potential witnesses.)

The whole Vincenti character being cut out of the movie is a shame, because it was really great at explaining why vampires didn't want to be known to be anything but myth. It's because they'd be hunted and destroyed. It gave the story a level of control, a vampire hierarchy, and put in place checks and balances to insure that it wouldn't be a storyline inundated with characters indiscriminately creating more and more vampires, logically pointing out that the more vampires you create the more you're going to have to fight over food (Of course, this is all negated considering they've done like seven 30 Days spin-offs... but I digress.)

Finally, the biggest disappointment to the movie is the whole "moral of the story" they infuse into it by making Eben and Stella recent divorces that rekindle their love amidst a vampire killing spree and realize that the most important thing is your family, yadda yadda yadda. This is a (pardon the pun) bloody fucking vampire movie. Specifically, one which contains "vampires slaughtering an entire town during 30 days of total darkness" as the major plot point. What the hell are they putting in a moral message in this thing for? It's a fucking horror movie for fucks sake. I'm sorry, but the last thing anybody is going into a gore movie is wanting to see is that in the end love conquers all. No, they just want to see people being killed by and/or killing vampires in new and inventive ways. Isn't having the characters overcoming adversity and surviving a vampire massacre enough? Shit on toast, this isn't a Sandra Bullock menopausal feel-good-story here. I expect there to be a plot in my vampire movie, but you can leave your moral message at home.

Now some positive points about 30 Days of Night: I mentioned above that Ben Templesmith's art is phenomenal., and unique and very very sketchy. Were they able to capture that on film? Short of making it an animated film, I highly doubt that. However, cudos to the make up effects artists who managed to do a pretty decent job at making the vampires at least resemble the vampires that Templesmiht depicts. At the very least they make the vampires look freaky. They don't make them cleanly, or well kempt, like some faggy goth's vision of what a vampire should look like either. These vampires are ugly, they're dirty, they have horrible teeth and pit black eyes, they wear gungy clothing, and they don't bother wiping the blood off after the rip the ever fucking shit out of your neck. In other words, these vampires look fucking mean.

The gore is great, there are a lot of great little bits, mostly decapitations and people being mauled to death, however the way the movie is cut in such a way that totally reeks of "Unrated directors cut" when it comes out on DVD, mark my words, I said it here first folks.

Anyway, in summation, 30 Days of Night is an entertaining film. If you're going to watch any scary movie this Halloween, go and see this one, it's apt to be the best of the bunch (I mean come on look at your choices: Rob Zombies ass-awful Halloween remake and fucking Saw IV. Give me a fucking break.) It's mostly true to the graphic novel, and gripes aside, it's an entertaining film.

Also if you like comics, get the graphic novel it's a good read and you can find the book at your local book store, so you won't have to degrade yourself walking into a comic book shop.

Watching This Movie Was Like: Having the Dookie Vampire from various Jhonen Vazquez comics come and suck out my dookie. Which strikes me as both disturbingly painful, but strangely enjoyable.

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