30 Days of Night (2007)

In a decade of awful horror movies, one film tries to be better than the rest. 30 Days of Night attempts to revive the horror genre by releasing a new breed of vampires to the world. Based on the graphic novel, the story takes place in the northernmost town in Alaska, where one month out of the year, the sun does not rise. This particular year, right before this stretch of darkness occurs, a stranger wanders into town seemingly from thin air. After startling a local, he is brought to the police station by the town sheriff, played by Josh Hartnett. Once there, the creepy man begins warning the sheriff that "something's coming". In this case, the "something's" are a pack of vicious vampires who are obviously out for that beautiful elixir that they just cannot resist. As the sun goes down, townspeople begin to be picked off one by one. Eventually, a small group of people meet and decide to ride out the attack together. They must then fight for their lives as they try to find food to last the month, or become food in the process.
According to the commercial, 30 Days of Night was going to "reinvent the vampire movie". The people who came up with that tag line should immediately be fired for flat out lying to America. In truth, this movie does nothing differently than any vampire movie I've ever seen. In a movie like 28 Days Later, zombies were redefined as being able to run just as fast as humans, thus rendering hope lost. But the vampires in this film are much the same as all vampires: quick, agile, violent, and vulnerable to sunlight. The only noticeable difference was the shape of some of their heads. But I'm not sure that's what they meant. Put simply, I've seen all of this before.
30 Days of Night is chock full of the cliches we have all become accustomed to; The band of survivors crowding in one building talking of loved ones and crying about futures that may not come; Somebody saying "It's not safe here, we have to move"; People being killed one by one as they do the aforementioned moving. It seems as though this movie follows the motions of all the films it supposedly is trying to be better than.
It is impossible to rate the acting in this film, as it is after all a modern day horror film. The only reason such a well known actor as Josh Hartnett was cast was probably to attract fans of his to seeing it. Ben Foster plays the mysterious stranger, and pretty much nails the ability to look and speak menacingly. Because of this, he becomes the only character that anybody really wants to see more of. Unfortunately, the stranger has only 15 minutes of screen time, leaving me one extremely pissed off movie-goer.
Overall, 30 Days of Night is a repetition of any other movie of its kind, using the same formula that's been around for years now. The ending lacks substance, and definetly leaves you feeling cheated out of your time. And when it's all said and done, it's basically just watching people get killed in nasty ways. My rating (3/10)