I really can't stay; but baby it's cold outside
I had already put a question mark over Josh Hartnett’s credibility when he played Lucy Liu’s love interest in Luck Number Slevin, what little he had has been lost in the wilds of Alaska, where he plays sheriff in a small town where everybody owns a gun and nobody is afraid to use them.
     The best way to sum up the plot of “2007’s most intense thriller” (what critics will do to guarantee an invite to their next Hollywood press junket?) … the best way to sum it up is that it’s a horror movie in which none of the characters has ever seen a horror movie. I don’t blame Hartnett for the final product, here blame lies with director David Slade and writers Steve Niles and Stuart Beattie. Hartnett gets blown a raspberry for taking on the project in the first place.
     Fans of B-Grade smut comedy will remember Hartnett from 40 Days and 40 Nights (I don’t remember that role because I refused to see the pic; I just know he was in it). In it he plays some lame brain who decides to abstain from sex for that period of time — this is the new millennium and when the Bible belt is bursting through its notches abstinence is hardly a stretch. Now a Catholic parish priest in Boston, for argument’s sake, trying to abstain for 40 days, there’s a hilarious plot line.
     Perhaps Josh thought he was signing up for 30 Days because it was a prequel to 40 Nights?
     The premise of the latest picture was quite promising: spending 30 days in Alaska in the middle of winter — there’s your horror story. Why the introduction of vampires into the mix was necessary is beyond me?
     That major plot flaw aside, vampires in a town where it stays dark for a month is an interesting scenario. It removes one method of killing them, gives victims no time to regroup and saves production designers coming up with a new type of coffin for these guys to sleep in at day.
     The constant darkness aside, there’s plenty of outs for the town’s folk. What about wooden stakes through the heart? Is it that hard to find a piece of timber in a town where every dwelling is built out of wood?
     As small bands of townsfolk gather in the wake of the initial dental onslaught, they then proceed to break the cardinal rule of surviving horror movies — they split up. Don’t these clowns realise, no matter the adversary, splitting up is simply a production technique for slaying half the cast. For God’s sake people, if you’re ever being chased by vampires, werewolves or aliens stay close to the actor that has top billing: your chances of survival go up tenfold.
     In the absence of silver bullets what about the pizzeria? Surely somebody could have ordered a family sized pepperoni, 2 liter Diet Coke and half a dozen servings of garlic bread, with extra garlic and a side order of garlic, then sat in the corner and waited until the sun came up?
     No sun, but this Alaskan oasis does have UV sun lamps, thanks to Josh’s grandma who’s growing hydroponic weed in her living room. No I didn’t make this up. Josh’s grandma is growing hydroponic weed in her living room.
     In a flash of brilliance (pardon the pun) Josh realizes that if he makes it to granny’s place he can lure the vampires in and zap them with the UV sunlamps. And it works!
     Josh’s ingenious plan to slip into grandma’s house, fire up the generator (as the vampires had shut down the town’s power plant on their first night) and fire up the lamps was brilliant in both it simplicity and execution — with one slight omission.
     Roll the tape…
     Vampire 1 rushes through front door. Josh blasts Vampire 1 with sunlamp. Vampire 1 shrieks, falls and dies at feet of comrades. Vampire 2 closes front door. Vampire 3 casually walks to basement and switches off generator. Josh? Screwed.
     Call me old fashioned but I would have set the lamps up in front of the generator.
     Aussie Melissa George plays Josh’s ex-wife and does what Australians in Hollywood do best: an American accent. Melissa got her start in one of those Australian soap operas which only the Brits seem to love, Home and Away. Her role in 30 Days of Night is a return to her roots in horror.
     Through 29 trying days of darkness and horror she once again falls in love with her man, the spark of everything that made their's a great romance is once again ignited. His bravery, his single minded dedication to protect and serve and his undying love for those closest to him. Then on day 30 she remembers why she left him: he’s an idiot.
     Having lasted a month being chased by crazed vampires, the town’s population is whittled down from a thousand or so to just half a dozen die-hards led by Hartnett. With two hours to sunrise on the final day he decides an old fashioned showdown with the vampires is in order. So he sticks a hypodermic needle into the neck of his recently slain vampire deputy, extracts a about 30ml of vamp blood and then injects himself. Ignoring the fact that such risky behavior makes him a prime candidate to contract HIV or hepatitis, he decides to turn himself into a vampire so he can fight the head of vampires played by … played by … played by? Okay, so nobody remembers him, he did though (I vividly remember) play Barman #2 in Leaving Las Vegas, a performance which completely overshadowed that of Barman #1 and Security Guard #3 — both of whom overacted in their roles.
     So having chewed up 718 of the 720 hours he needed to survive Josh commits suicide by turning himself into a vampire for the climactic fight scene which — get this — he loses. Josh gets his ass kicked by the vampires but they don’t have time to finish him off because it’s too close to sunrise. So the vampires take off, the sun rises and Josh dies in Melissa’s arms.
     At the same time the audience dies a Hollywood death in the dark hollows of the cineplex, the end credits roll the cinema doors fly open, we’re bathed in sunlight and we all come back to life. Freaky.