Frostbite

30 Days of Night. Directed by David Slade. Starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and Danny Huston.

Life is a frozen hell in a small northern town. I can't imagine a worse way to die than being mauled to death by vampires on a snowbank. To add insult to injury, the vampires in Thirty Days of Night like to spout aphorisms that sound suspiciously like Nietzche. Frostbite, continental philosophy, and blood sucking ghouls: what fresh hell is this?

It's a clever premise - vampires terrorizing a northern community - and it's hard to believe that nobody has thought of it before. Daylight being one of Dracula's chief weaknesses, it makes sense to move him and his ilk to a locale that experiences little or no sunshine during the winter. Think Northern Exposure meets Alien, and you get the gist of the plot.

While the setting is unusual, the characters aren't. Josh Hartnett is well cast as Eben Oleson, the sheriff of a small town in Northern Alaska that experiences thirty days of night. However, the domestic drama is predictable, as the crisis serves asa a catalyst for reuniting Eben Oleson with his estranged wife, Stella Oleson, played by the suitably gothic Melissa George, back together again.

While the action sequences are always well staged, it takes away from the time developing the characters. This tends to minimize the dramatic impact of the horror. When Eben discovers that his partner, Billy Kitka (Manu Bennett) murdered his family to prevent the vampires from killing them, the impact of the scene is muted because while the audience has heard of the family, it never gets to watch the family together in happier, ghoul-free times.

The movie is a good mash up of the horror and action genres. I didn't think there was anything terribly original about the film except for the setting, but it does deliver a good, solid two hours of entertainment.