30 Days of Night, or, Aurora Gorealis

I’ve never read the comic from which 30 Days of Night is adapted, but I could still tell pretty quickly that the movie is a strong adaptation. Especially during the first half, so much of it feels like a comic. Not in the same sense that Darkman feels like a comic book, but in the way that “mature” comics from Dark Horse or Vertigo tell their stories. (The comic was published by IDW, but Dark Horse Entertainment was one of the production companies for the movie, and it’s more about vibe than any specific franchises). The movie’s full of stationary shots with strong compositions chosen for maximum impact. You can immediately imagine them being panels on a comic book page. Characters are often shot in close-up, delivering short lines of dialogue crammed full of as much weight as possible, and you can practically see the area on the frame where the speech bubble would appear. And scenes of movement and action are shown in discrete static images — a victim, a close-up of a knife, a shot…