30 Days of Night

Steve Niles

30 Days of Night was already a cult hit when it got optioned for film (and got David Slade, of the recent and deeply disturbing Hard Candy, attached as a director). Now, expect it to explode. But does it deserve to?

I'll say this: it has the potential to be a great, great movie. Niles has come up with an interesting story, though one that needs a good deal of fleshing out (which would explain the existence of a number of sequels); we meet certain interesting characters for a very short amount of time, and then never see them again, and there are all kinds of fun things that could be done with the plot. And the desolate, windswept plains of Northern Alaska as a setting... okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The setting is the desolate, windswept plains of Northern Alaska. (Bet you couldn't guess that, huh?) The town suffers a month-long darkness every once in a while thanks to the rotation of the Earth (think of this as the flipside of Erik Skjoldbaerg's fantastic film Insomnia). Just after the sun sets and ushers in one of those month-long nights, the town is attacked by a band of vampires. The local sherriff and a band of survivors have to fend them off until the sun rises again.

This is a very good premise. A bit more fleshing out, and you could have a great story. However, the artwork is mediocre in its finest moments, and it doesn't have many finest moments. And with the art making up so much of the experience of a graphic novel, it's tough to recommend this one.

As I write this, release on the film is set for October 19, 2007. (Keep checking IMDB, and watch the way release dates get played with over the course of a year.) Perhaps we'll see that potential realized.