FLIGHT

I went to see 30 Days of Night this weekend, I really enjoyed it. My Girlfriend spent most of the movie covering her eyes and I jumped out of my seat more than a few times. I'm normally not into horror movies, but this one caught my attention. I come from the North myself and I was intrigued by the concept of Vampires in the North using the longer night times to their advantage. In the case of Alaska no sunlight at all. Since I come from a similar all be it less harsh climate (Winnipeg) it allowed me to identify with the characters surviving in such cold and harsh conditions.

I like that the story was well thought out and the characters in my opinion were very convincing. All in all definitely worth checking out.

Gore alert, this movie has some very graphic violence in it... Beware.

Cheers,
James

I enjoyed it, but I have to admit that it was a little tedious (and not because of the suspense, but because of the flat tone of the entire piece). The film has a great concept, but it feels as if the storytellers just didn't know where else to go with it once the wheels were set in motion, so there's a lot of sitting around and waiting without a whole lot of tension. Within its self-imposed limitations, however, the actors and director do a decent job. At least the opening shots were really cool. I wanted to know more about that tanker in the ice.

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Granted the pace was slow.

However that worked for me, it helped reinforce the isolation and frustration of the protagonists. In a lot of cases if you are trapped somewhere you have many options to sneak out, but in -50 C you will freeze to death in a very short time. So where can you go? As I mentioned, I come from a cold Northern Climate so it was really eerie for me to think what I would do if Vampires had me trapped mid winter up here.

My criticism would be that I think they chose to show too much gore. Especially when the Vampires were feeding I love their shark style teeth, but I can fill in the gaps in my mind as to the damage they would inflict.

Also I thought the ending was quite abrupt, maybe it was just me.

My favorite scenes were the huge aerial shot over the town when the Vampires attacked I thought that was well done, and that shot of The Stranger (Ben Foster) in the Jail cell just before the Attack, just standing in the cell being creepy. I really enjoyed his performance in 3:10 to Yuma as well.

I would like to read the graphic novel for comparison as well, unfortunately I'm on a budget and I have to get Flight 3 and 4, and now Flight Explorer and the complete collection of Tintin (soon to be released). Then I can get 30 days of night.

Well I have blathered quite enough.

Thank you so much for your remarks Kazu.

Amen about the tanker in the ice. The initial half-hour or so of the movie was pretty good, and I found myself liking Josh Hartnett a lot more than I thought I would.

It seemed like it didn't know who we should be siding with, though. I got a strong feeling like the filmmakers were setting up the vampires so that dudes who like vampires can sympathize with them. Does that make any sense?

I also didn't find it particularly frightening. The one part that seemed like it could be mined for more terror was that bit where they use the girl as bait. They could have dragged that out and done more with it. It's such a cruel concept, I would have liked to see them be more merciless with it.

And I'll agree that there was a lot of blood, but the gore wasn't drawn out in a really torturous way - it's generally quite "clean", and we don't see a lot of suffering. For me, the scene where the husband is chasing after his wife who's being dragged underneath the houses was a lot more chilling and affecting than the shots of gurgling necks. As far as the drawn-out decapitations go, at least the victim wasn't thrashing around and trying to scream/escape while they were being hacked up. THAT would have been gross.

And what was up with the ending? It felt like all parties involved just phoned it in. (except for the fx team).

Nevertheless, I went to see cool vampires doing cool vampire things, and it delivered on that.

EDIT: oh yeah, the aerial shot! That was excellent, too, and really quite scary. Though it depicted a lot of carnage that we don't see in subsequent street scenes, which seemed odd.

I agree with a lot of what you have to say Tony, I however did find the movie very scary but I'm a big wimp when it comes to horror movies and rarely go to see them.

As far as the carnage in the streets over 30 days and a couple of blizzards that could easily be covered up with snow. But I get what you are saying and that is my way of rationalizing that slip up.

Still I really enjoyed this movie and would recommend it to anyone...
except the faint of heart, I might not recommend it to them.