30 Days of Night (2007)

Very suspenseful and original. Many of the scenes were done so well with the filming and scenery, very believable. The characters were all believable and none acted over the top. The fight scenes were gory but well done. I was disappointed in the ending as Josh Bartlett's character chose a very unbelievable solution. Up to that point he worked in an intelligent way managing to survive and protect the others. A great scary movie with an original story and characters

Why this hasn't got a better rating on IMDb, I'm a little surprised. It's brutal, packs no punches, and is a true horror film without much sentiment. It preys on fears of the dark and it's got vampires to boot. It's not novelty in the way Lost Boys is and it's not gratuitous horror.

Vampire films are arguably one of the most over-exposed of the horror sub-genres, but TDON is a refreshing departure from what has become mainstream vampire movies. Set in a northern Alaskan town that experiences the natural phenomenon of losing the sun for a month, the town is besieged by a group of mysterious vampires. They are vicious, pitiless creatures, intent on wiping out the human race. Ordinarily, I'd be looking for a bit of backstory to put the plot and its movement in context, and am usually annoyed when there is none. However, the lack of history of these vampires just adds to their mystique, and the sense of their eternal existence. Josh Hartnett leads a crew of more than passable actors, but Danny Huston steals the show as the vampire patriarch, Marlow. He develops a style and execution that has the viewer actually despising the character, no easy task in modern cinema. The other vampire actors also display a merciless, violent approach that have you rooting for the trapped townspeople, just as their future seems hopeless. The production values and sets are above average, as are the FX and CGI, certainly something you would expect from a big movie house like Columbia Pictures. The only thing that I couldn't wrap my mind around was the passage of time. Supposedly, these townspeople had to survive by hiding for a full thirty days, but the pacing of the vampire's killing and the thinning of the townspeople herd couldn't make me believe that they lasted that long. It was probably the most implausible part of the movie. Still, it was an entertaining thrill ride for 90 minutes.

I am a big fan of The Thing (1982) and I was looking for films with similar vibes so I used IMDb advanced search; typed ''winter'' for keywords, then refined to narrow as feature films only, then horror as genre. This film was one of the films that were listed. So I didn't think about it much and started watching it without knowing anything about it. I can't tell that I really liked it, but it was an OK film. At least it didn't make me angry. First I'd like to mention the negatives. I didn't like Josh Harnett's performance, nor any other actor's in particular. Despite the premise and the name of the film, you can hardly tell where(when) you are in the timeline of 30 days. And it doesn't even feel like 30 days, it really feels like the events in the story happened in a single day or two, and that's the biggest fail of the film considering the premise. If they managed to give the sense that days were getting harder and harder, the audience would feel the tension rising. But as I said, it didn't happen that way.On the good side, I thought the vampires looked creepy, though I don't have any interest in vampires whatsoever.I don't suggest it to anyone, unless you are looking for a film to watch with half of your attention to kill some time. It's not an awful film, but there is nothing special or smart about it either.