30 Days of Night
Comparing the comic book mini series with the feature film
by William the Bloody
The town of Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost community in North America. It is just shy of the North Pole. Being so far to the north, during the summer months, from May 10th to August 2nd, the sun doesn't set at all, and on the flip side of that is the winter where the sun doesn't rise from November 18th to December 17th. What the small town of Barrow doesn't know, is that vampires are real and some of them are planning a little "party" in their town, an all out feeding frenzy during those thirty days when the sun refuses to come up and rescue the townsfolk from being massacred.
The comic book was written by Steve Niles with art by Ben Templesmith. Niles created a very high concept and intriguing story. Barrow is a real town, and the sun actually doesn't really rise for thirty days, so it is the perfect setting for a vampire story, indeed. The comic has some excerpts of communications between vampires as they arrange this get together as well as some decent exposition to their vampire mythos. Templesmith uses a stylized blend of ink and paint to create some creepy looking vamps as well as overall visuals. Unfortunately, the comic feels more than a little rushed. You really lose the sense of time in it. The whole thirty days go by and it only feels like half of that at most. You don't get too much of the sense of desperation the people hiding out trying to simultaneously avoid being detected by the vampires and starvation. There aren't any dates given at any point so it all just melds together. Speaking of melding, the art doesn't really do it for me. Sure the people look okay and the vamps are neat, but there aren't ever any backgrounds, just like globs of paint smears. You don't get a sense for the town. He does do really excellent blood spatter, so I'll give him that, but mostly not my cup o' tea.
The movie is directed by David Slade and it does a great of translating some of the key moments from the comic to the screen. The guy's head on a stick, the little girl vamp, et cetera all made for some great scenes on film. They were even able to make Templsmith's highly stylized vamps come almost perfectly to life. As I said with the comic feeling rushed, they managed to take the source material and successfully expand on it. The human survivors in the movie did not find the one perfect hiding spot like the characters in the comic; no they waited for snow storms and kept moving to find supplies. The depiction of this fictitious version of Barrow was really neat and it worked for me. Yes, the real life Barrow houses thousands and this one was only home to a few hundred, but it worked for the story and was believable. The houses were up off the ground in order to better insulate against the cold and it was neat little touches like that which endeared it to me. There were some pretty damn cool death scenes and they did work in Templesmith's great blood spatter fetish as well (no way this could have been a good adaptation without it). On the other hand, I was very disappointed that in the film version the main character of the sheriff was divorced/separated from his wife, when they were in fact happily married in the comic. This felt really, really clichéd to me as I knew exactly how their relationship was going go (SPOILER!): wife doesn't like him and doesn't want to talk, they are forced to spend time together hiding for their lives, she starts to like him again, they fall in love all over, and he has to die at the end (/SPOILER). How often does this formula have to be done in the movies before they give it a rest already?? I also didn't like how they came up with a vampire language. This didn't make any sense to me at all. Vampires are created from all walks of life so how could they have a common language? There wasn't as much exposition as I would have liked in the movie version regarding the vampires as there was in the comic so parts could be confusing if you haven't read the comic.
In both versions I felt not enough explanation was given to the "stranger" at the beginning of the story. There is a guy who comes into town before the thirty days of night and basically starts to sabotage it for the vampires, such as stealing mobile phones. I didn't really "get" it in the comic until after seeing the film that he was supposed to be a "ghoul." You know, like Renfield in Dracula, a mortal servant to the vampires. His appearance was really brief in the comic, but they kind of interrogate him in the movie, and between both I was able to work it out. I suppose it's good that they didn't beat you over the head with it, and maybe I'm a little slow.
Overall, they both have their good points and their bad ones. There is good exposition in the comic, but the art and the story flow is not so great (oh and also some ongoing subplot threads which will be left dangling if you don't read the follow up stories). The movie had terrific visuals and characterization, but lacked on exposition. You're best to read the comic then see the film to get it all, but if you could only do one or the other, I'd say skip the comic and see the film.
The comic book mini series: B
The feature film: A-