30 Days of Night (Blu-ray)

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he ending of the film was something I wasn´t terribly fond of, either. I´m not going to spoil it, but essentially, a main character finds themselves battling a circle of vampires in one of the most generic and uninspired fight sequences I have seen in years. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high and I was expecting an intelligent and creative way for the heroes to ride into the sunset after the vampires were banished. It didn´t happen. Instead, one too many clichés are thrown into the mix and one of the most ill-conceived and trite sacrifices occur to help explain how the survivors manage to outlast the vampires. How the subplot of the never-explained marital problems between the main characters is resolved also left a taste worse than blood in my mouth. "30 Days of Night" is one of those films with an ending that seems tacked on to simply end the film. It was disappointing.
I didn´t like or dislike "30 Days of Night." I thought it was a mediocre film that disappointed me simply because I had expected more with the involvement of Sam Raimi as producer. I surely hope his upcoming directorial return to horror is a little more inspired. Sure, this film was an adaptation from a comic book mini-series and these films tend to be hit or miss. The target was in sight and a lot of things were done properly, unfortunately, the arrow hit the outer ring of the target and was nowhere near a bull´s eye. I liked the spunky performance of Melissa George and felt that Josh Hartnett did a decent enough job, but this film just had too many flaws to make it anything more than average. It´s a vampire film and I´m sure I´ll watch it again, but "30 Days of Night" doesn´t do anything special to make it notable.
Video:

With much of the film taking place in dark spaces, I was more than happy with the colorful and detailed representation of "30 Days of Night" onto Blu-ray. The 2.40:1 transfer is mastered with the AVC MPEG-4 codec that is clean and without any inherent flaws from the mastering process. Detail is incredibly strong in the film and you could almost feel the texture of the artificial snow used in the film. The scruffy chin of Josh Hartnett is detailed enough to count the hairs. Coloring is stylistic and in comic book style. Reds are amped up to highlight the bloodshed in the film and Melissa George´s red coat stands out nicely. Yellows and greens are also strong. With so much darkness in the film, the pictures only true flaw is uncovered. Film grain is common and heavy at times. This is a byproduct of the darkly lit scenes, but it is noticeable enough to often be distracting. Detail is never lost during these dark scenes, which offsets some of the ill feelings towards the film grain.

Sound:

Sony seems to be jumping onto the Dolby TrueHD bandwagon and "30 Days of Night" comes packed with two TrueHD soundtracks for English and French speaking folk. The disc contains standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes for Spanish, Portuguese and Thai. Subtitle support also includes Chinese subtitles. The next generation soundtrack of the title is aggressive and audibly engaging. Both bass via the .1 LFE channel and surround information in the split rears truly add to the experience. During the most fervent of the vampire attacks, screams and physical pain can be heard in every channel. The musical score is loud and carried through all six channels rather nicely. Dialogue is clean and never lost in the action. This is one of those films that never takes a rest from providing a bombastic soundtrack and the TrueHD mix handles everything expertly. I can certainly say that "30 Days of Night" is far more interesting to watch because of the impressive sound mix.

Extras:

The Commentary with Josh Hartnett, Melissa George and Producer Rob Tapert is one of the more entertaining commentary tracks I´ve heard in a while. I would have loved to have heard Tapert´s longtime collaborator and friend Sam Raimi take part the commentary track, but the three that do lend their time to the two hour chat does an amazing job. They have fun while they talk about the film and provide a number of details about the making of the film. There is some good background information, anecdotes about the experiences of the three, such as problems with wearing the contact lenses in the film. A few plot lines that didn´t make the film are revealed and an education on the phrase "Shrimp on the Barbie" is provided. I think I may have enjoyed the commentary track more than the main film and hearing Melissa George´s Aussie accent was a definite plus.

The feature 30 Images of Night is an interactive feature and listed as the only ´Blu-ray Exclusive´ for the release. This feature has the user press the ´blue´ button to toggle frames from the original graphic novel in which "30 Days of Night" is based for comparative purposes. A capability is also provided to launch a slideshow of the images and watch them in that manner and you get to use the ´green´ button of the remote to activate this. It takes only a few seconds to figure out the operation of this feature and I felt the menu noises were annoying after about four frames, but this was a nice little interactive feature. Exiting the feature took a few moments of thought, but I managed to escape. Blu-ray hasn´t given me much opportunity to use the colored buttons on the remote, so that was at least a bonus.

Eight Featurettes (50:19) are also included on the disc, as well as previews. The first featurette, Pre-Production (8:27) has the filmmakers talk about making a ´better´ horror film and spends time with director David Slade, Rob Tapert and others. Building Barrow (5:15) looked at what it took to develop a fictitious Barrow Alaska that paid homage to the graphic novel. The Look (6:48) further looked at making "30 Days of Night" look similar in style to the graphica novel. Blood, Guts & the Nasty Shit (7:24) looked at the really cool gore effects used in the film and spent time with Peter Jackson´s WETA. Cool stuff! Stunts (7:15) was exactly what the name states. The Vampire (5:57) spent time looking at the vampires in the film. The filmmakers intended for an entirely different kind of vampire and they succeeded. Night Shoots (5:59) talked about the difficulties in filming a movie that takes place entirely at night. Finally, Casting (9:05) looked at what was involved in gathering the film´s vampires and others. I enjoyed the comic book styling of the making of feature and as a collective whole, this was a very nice look at the making of the film.

Closing Comments:

I really had hoped that "30 Days of Night" would become one of my all-time favorite vampire films. With Sam Raimi directing, Josh Hartnett starring, Melissa George looking gorgeous and a very good source for the film´s story, it seemed that "30 Days of Night" had a lot of good going for it. Unfortunately, the execution of the film by director David Slade was far from perfect and "30 Days of Night" suffered in a few areas. It is still an average film that is hard to love, but just as hard to loathe. It is passable entertainment, but I´m a sucker for vampire movies. The Bu-ray release sports a very detailed picture and a quite impressive sound mix. The bonus materials are not top-of-the-line, but they are above average and I particularly enjoyed the commentary. This is a nice Blu-ray release of a middle-of-the-road chiller.

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