Film review: 30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night @ IMDB

You can tell Halloween has just passed. Horror films are everywhere at the moment which is where Josh Hartnett and a posse of vampires come in.

Mr Harnett is the sheriff of the most Northern town in the US, practically in the arctic. And every year the sun sets and night lasts for 30 days, most of the townsfolk travel south leaving a few hardy people left. Now. What mythical creatures hate the sunlight, like to feast on innocents and look great covered in blood on film posters?

Yep, vampires.

So, at the very least, it's a great set up. The whole mood is foreboding right from the start. Let's get this straight, this is a vampire film where nothing good happens. It starts with a pack of dogs being killed and goes downhill from there. The brutality of the vampires is unflinchingly shown it all it's gory glory. One of the best sequences is an aerial shot of the town showing the vampires tearing through the people; you see people on the floor being ripped to shreds, gunshots going off, blood smeared across the white snow.

So the vampires are great. The survivors hide and begin to try to survive the next 30 days. Maybe this section does sag in what is essentially lots of scenes of people sat around in a loft trying not to make much noise. But you get those stings of violence that keeps the film going and boy does it get bad for these people.

No spoilers but I have to mention a 6 year old vampire girl. And the only way to kill the vampires is to cut their heads of with a freaking axe. Do the math.

Oh, and it's another comic film. First of a trilogy. Haven't read the comic but want to now.

So it was great. No problems with any of the performances, the film never goes with the easy cliches and the ending is punch in the gut.

A word of warning though: this film has the most disturbing end credits, like, ever. Seriously. Worst I've seen since Blair Witch. I saw this with my good friend Ryan and we normally watch the majority of the end credits. We sat there and watched this really unsettling series of twisted images and listened to the bizarre white noise coming from the surround sound.

"Hmm," I said. "These credits are pretty unsettling."

"Yeah, yeah they are," said Ryan. Beat. "Can we go now?"

"Sure," I said and we ran out of there like scared kittens.

Weapon wise, nothing but an axe.