Rough Trade Friday: 30 Days Of Night (Film)

Horror movies, much like anything else associated with that genre at large, are a bit of an acquired taste. People tend to either like them or hate them, with very few standing in the middle ground. I myself have always enjoyed the genre, so long as what I'm viewing, reading, or listening to is... well, for lack of a better term, good. In order to keep me entertained, the book needs to be well-written, the movie needs to be stylishly made, and it doesn't hurt a comic to have some slick artwork to go along with a strong story and dialogue.

When 30 Days of Night was originally published as a graphic novel, it took me a while to warm up to it because Ben Templesmith's art style wasn't something I particularly appreciated until I'd had a little more exposure to it through his work on the Silent Hill comics. When I actually picked up his take on vampires in Alaska and took it home with me, I found myself falling in love with it fairly quickly.

Naturally, I was a little suspicious when a film version of the comic was announced, though my worries were lessened when I found out that David Slade was going to be directing it. While, yes, he was making a comic-based movie, his last film was the controversial Hard Candy -which proved he is a director able to make an incredibly mature movie without caring whether or not he pleases mainstream audiences- and I wondered how his directorial style would actually mesh with the artistic one of Templesmith's visuals.

The movie's story doesn't really deviate from that of the comic (vampires terrorize a small town in Alaska which is so far north that night lasts for a solid month), but the main challenge Slade faces is making the overall visual style something which the franchise's obsessive fans won't scream bloody murder over. Slade does this nicely, to be honest, largely through his command of color (oftentimes, it's his use of a lack of color, though, which makes the film look so damn good). Of course, the fact that he packed a stellar cast into the -admittedly, sometimes shallow- roles do a great job with their characters, too. My particular favorite was Danny Huston in the vampiric role of Marlow, though Ben Foster and the always entertaining Josh Hartnett are close behind with their performances, as well.

Overall, 30 Days of Night is an incredibly slick horror movie, one that manages to take the subject of vampires and do what 28 Days Later did for zombies. If you're a fan of the comic, or horror films in general, you'll most likely adore it. If, however, the supernatural/horrific genre isn't your cup of tea, then you'll probably want to give this one a pass.