I’m willing to give vampire/zombie movies a lot of slack, but 30 Days of Night was pretty lame. The premise of the original comic is maintained but many new characters and plot points are added. The pacing frequently feels awkward with the introduction of minor characters to see them killed off soon after. Any zombie/vampire movie will have the requisite scene in which one of the good guys is forced to “save” a friend by executing them before they completely transform into a monster. 30 Days of Night has 3-4 of these scenes except the good guy finds it necessary to decapitate his friends with an axe, usually requiring multiple swings to finish the job, instead of a the more traditional sympathy bullet to the head. (Note to friends: should it ever be necessary to stop my transformation into a creature of the night I would much prefer a shot to the head over being bludgeoned to death with an axe…) The comic included an interesting sub plot with in-fighting between the vampires with regard to the safety of such a wide scale attack on humans, that is removed altogether in the movie and the vampires lack really any character. They do occasionally exchange quips in subtitled “vampire language” but mainly they just shriek at each other which is more annoying than frightening. The final fight is relatively anticlimactic which was rather disappointing. Last but not least for a movie that is supposed to take place at night a lot of the exterior shots are pretty bright and well lit.

All together an awkwardly put together movie that is missing a lot of the polish and many of the points of interest present in the graphic novel.