Product Description

Josh Harnett (Black Dahlia Pearl Harbor) crosses over to the dark side in this bone-chilling adaptation of the cult-hit graphic novel brought to the screen in all its demonic glory. In a small Alaskan town thirty days of night is a natural phenomenon. Very few outsiders visit until a band of bloodthirsty deathly pale vampires mark their arrival by savagely attacking sled dogs. But soon they find there are much more satisfying thirst-quenchers about: human beings. One by one the townspeople succumb to a living nightmare but a small group survives at least for now. The vampires use the dark to their advantage and surviving this cold hell is a game of cat and mouse and screams.System Requirements:Run Time: 113 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Rating: R UPC: 043396196155 Manufacturer No: 19615

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #676 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com
David (Hard Candy) Slade directs this nerve-jangling adaptation of the popular graphic novel series about a mob of vampires that overruns a remote Alaskan town in the grip of 30 Days of Night. Josh Hartnett and Melissa George are the film's de facto heroes (he's the stoic town sheriff and she's his estranged fire-marshal wife) but the picture's real MVP is Slade's camera (along with cinematographer Jo Willems), which careens across the town's snowy landscape to detail the vampires' horrific assault on its inhabitants, which are quickly pared down to a hardy few. The script, co-written by the source material's creator, Steve Niles, along with Pirates of the Caribbean's Stuart Beattie and Hard Candy's Brian Nelson), proudly wears its influences on its crimson-stained sleeve (Bram Stoker's Dracula, natch, but also Salem's Lot, Night of the Living Dead, and John Carpenter's version of The Thing) and boils down the graphic novels to a series of tense and extremely bloody standoffs between Harnett and George's band of survivors and the vaguely Slavic and ferocious bloodsuckers led by Marlow (a feral and frightening Danny Huston). And if the characters seem stock and the finale begs suspension of disbelief, the set pieces leading up to it are sufficiently supercharged with suspense and violence to please most horror fans. Standouts in the supporting cast are Ben Foster as the film's Renfield figure and Mark Boone Junior; the disturbing score by Brian Reitzell also merits a mention. --Paul Gaita

Stills from 30 Days of Night (click for larger image)

Beyond 30 Days of Night

On Blu-ray

Audio CD

Hardcover Book

On the DVD
For a film steeped in dark atmosphere and darker violence, the supplemental features for 30 Days of Night have a surprisingly light-hearted tone, but still manage to provide a wealth of information about the picture's challenging production. Commentary by stars Josh Hartnett and Melissa George with producer Rob Tapert establishes the relaxed and friendly feel of the extras with amusing and observant stories about the New Zealand locations and scenes that nearly missed inclusion in the final cut; the cast and crew also cut up in eight short featurettes that address everything from the gruesome special effects (courtesy Weta Digital) to casting and stunts, as well as the effects of 33 consecutive night shoots on director David Slade (who mugs cheerfully for the documentary camera) and his crew. An episode of the 2006 anime series Blood + (which deals with vampire-like creatures as fierce as Marlow's crew from 30 Days) is also included, though this is replaced on the Blu-Ray edition by a featurette that compares the feature's visual design to panels from its graphic novel source material. Trailers for other Sony and Ghost House films, including both Grudge movies, round out the special features. -- Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews

Not for the weak of heart
Talk about a bloodfest, if you are weak of heart and afraid of blood, this is not for you. But if you are like me and can watch anything with the lights off and no one in the house, this the film for you. Very violent and plenty of intense moments. This is the kind of movie thats jumps out the screen at you at the theatre or whereever you maybe.

I'm one of the view who actually loved this movie!!!
Realizing that people have different opinions about what they read and watch, and that not all will agree with each other on what's good and what isn't, I was still somewhat surprised by how many viewers didn't find the horror movie, 30 Days of Night, to be as great as I did. I'm usually pretty hard on horror flicks and don't expect a lot when I go to see one, but 30 Days of Night won me over in a way that left me stunned at the end of the movie and wanting to immediately see it again.

Directed by David Slade, the story takes place in Barrow, Alaska (a real town), which is in the northern part of the state and once a year experiences thirty days of night. Most of the town's people head south for the entire month, but there are enough humans left to entice a group of roving vampires to spend some quality vacation time there. It all begins when a stranger arrives (played wonderfully by Ben Foster) during the last day of light and cuts the telephone lines and kills the sled dogs so that the remaining town's people will be snowed in and unable to escape the wrath of his master, Marlow. The vampires then waste little time in attacking the town and killing every human being they can get their hands and teeth on. It's the town's sheriff (played by Josh Hartnett) and his estranged wife (played by Melissa George) who manage to gather the surviving citizens and to find a place where they can hide from their hungry predators. The problem, of course, is finding a way to stay alive until the sun once again appears after thirty long days of night. That's going to be the challenge and few are going to make it.

I thoroughly loved this movie and have watched it about twelve times, enjoying every single viewing. Though I'm not a big fan of Josh Hartnett, he bought him as the sheriff and I found his character to be totally believable. I also felt that all of the other actors did an excellent job as well, especially Danny Huston, who played Marlow, the leader of the vampires. He was utterly terrifying. I thought the vampires were played true to life in that they were portrayed as savage, violent predators, killing everything within their grasp so that they could feed on the blood. They were unbelievably fast and didn't hesitate for a second in taking someone's head off, separating it from the body with one powerful sweep of their clawed hands. The desolation of Barrow was captured perfectly by the set designer and director of photography as the camera took in from above what was happening below as dozens and dozens of people were massacred in different parts of the town by the marauding vampires. This movie had me literally sitting on the edge of my seat and jumping in all the right places. In many ways I thought this was the best horror flick of 2007, running just ahead of the film, 1408, with John Cusack.

With regards to the DVD, I think I was close to being the first person to buy it when it eventually came out. I was hoping the movie would be released in a Special Two-Disc Collector's set, but it only came out as a single disc. Bah, humbug! Still, there's a great featurette on the making of the film, containing interviews with the cast members and crew, plus a look at the real Barrow, Alaska. The strange thing is that when the DVD came out, my roommate's daughter was getting ready to fly to Alaska with some friends, and I kept trying to get her to watch the movie before she left. She told me NO! in a rather loud way, not wanting to have nightmares the whole time that she was there, freezing in below-zero temperatures. I would've gone to Aruba, myself! LOL. Anyway, this film certainly has a special place in my DVD collection of horror films. Highly recommended!!!

Gorgeously crafted and completely inane
As the sun sets on Barrow, Alaska, for its annual month of arctic night, the town is beset by a series of sabotages which soon escalate into violent attacks. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) and Stella (Melissa George), his estranged fire-marshal wife who is trapped in Barrow when she misses the last plane out, quickly discover the town is being invaded by vampires. With no sunlight to save them for another 30 days, they and the usual rag-tag bunch of disposable companions have an impossible fight on their hands... Beautifully shot by Jo Willems this film's visual style is the best thing about it. It really is an exquisite-looking failure. What's missing is any real tension or suspense. The setup is wonderful, but the plotting is lame. Once the terrified locals figure out what's afoot, there's nothing driving the plot but the obvious and rather non-narrative urge to bunker down and wait it out. As it happens, that's surprisingly easy given the vampires seem to have amazing physicality but no common sense. There are cheats aplenty, with the survivors wandering through blizzards and somehow magically moving from building to building with ease, when at other times they dare not open the door for fear of attack. The size of both the town and the band of blood-suckers seem to change for convenience. There's very little in the way of innovation from the survivors, who only rarely lock-on to what this kind of story always requires of them: "Hey, let's figure out what these creatures are, what kills them, and what we might be able to do with what little resources we have!" The climax is unmotivated and absurd. Similarly, the love story has a nice setup but isn't used, except as the pretext for a feeble romantic ending that seems shoe-horned into place. Hartnett plays himself, as always. George has nothing to work with, and Danny Huston is a rather boring villain, mainly because the screenplay gives him no complexity and nothing to do. When director David Slade hits his stride with some action set pieces, he shows he has talent. But again, the screenplay gives him scant opportunities to show his stuff. This really is a squandered chance to do something fresh with a promising spin on an old genre. But it certainly does look great.