Karnataka   

All they could come up with were vampires?

Thirty Days of Night (English)

Director: David Slade

Cast: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston

Imagine a month of unending night. Imagine 720 continuous hours of darkness. What horrors might plague you when the sun sets and doesn’t rise for weeks on end?

The possibilities are limitless.

Unfortunately, in California, the land of never-ending sun, such a possibility is so remote that it cannot even be adequately imagined.

And so you have “Thirty Days of Night”, where the darkest terrors that haunt the night are a bunch of vampires that look much like European club-hoppers after a messy meal.

Which is not to say that “Thirty Days of Night” doesn’t have its scares.

On the contrary, the film plays familiar horror conventions with surprisingly good skill.

If you like your horror films gory and violent, this one is sure to hold your attention for a large part of 113 minutes.

The initial build-up, when eerie happenings precede the arrival of the vampires, and they make their first few hunts in relative secrecy, is particularly terrifying.

Director David Slade, with help from cinematographer Jo Willems and editor Art Jones, gives the vampires impressive speed, strength and fright value.

Having established a reasonable premise, however, he finds himself spent, and hence drags the film down to its inevitable end.

Particularly painful are the long intervals when the usual bunch of survivors wait it out in this or that temporary hideout and the film tries to build in back-story and pad up the moment.

Although Josh Hartnett is quite convincing as Eben Oleson when he’s being Sheriff and leader and wielding his trusty axe, the sub-plot of baggage between him and estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) caves through because neither actor displays the slightest bit of interest or attraction in the other.

And while Danny Huston has occasional good moments as Marlowe, the vampire leader, he and the rest of the cast simply do not know what to do with themselves except bare their teeth, pretend to eat the humans or pretend to be eaten by the vampires.

The worst part of it all is that the film takes itself too seriously, giving no opportunity for smart lines or quirky moments that might relieve the excruciating sameness of the film.

At the end of the day, “Thirty Days of Night” has its moments, but just not enough to make watching the entire film worthwhile.

Rakesh Mehar

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