Josh Hartnett Interview
|
Josh Hartnett's Halloween horror By Albertina Lloyd
Josh Hartnett has become the latest Hollywood hunk to take on the role of vampire slayer and battle the undead in his new film '30 Days of Night'.
Released just in time for a Halloween thrill, the horror is set in the small Alaskan town of Barrow where the sun sets for 30 days of the year, leaving the remote residence in complete darkness.
A group of vampires learn of Barrow's dark fate and decide to invade the town during the days of night to feast on the vulnerable residents.
Hartnett plays the sheriff, while former Australian soap star Melissa George plays his estranged wife, a fire marshal who has flown back to the small town for last minute security checks before the annual evacuation of most of the residents.
The film was shot in New Zealand and the snowy landscapes are impressive as well as ominously vast and barren.
'30 Days of Night' begins with a slow, but spooky scene setting introduction, showing all the signs of being a classic horror. As the town prepares to be plunged into darkness a bizarre spate of vandalism occurs which is gradually cutting Barrow off from making any contact with the outside world.
This coincides with the arrival of The Stranger, brilliantly played by 'X-Men: The Last Stand' star Ben Foster, who thirstily declares with much foreboding: "They're coming!"
As the vampires descend and the remaining residents start to realise they are under attack, the film has the potential to have you gripping your seat and biting your nails as you enjoy chilling build-ups and heart-stopping horror moments.
But '30 Days of Night' - based on a comic book series - can't quite decide what it wants to be. Instead of sticking to the old fail safe scare tactics the film suddenly starts telling the story from the side of the vampires as well.
The group of blood-thirsty monsters are keen to keep their own dying breed alive, and plan to burn the town to the ground at the end of their feasting, to keep their existence a secret.
Danny Huston stands out as their leader Marlow with his chilling performance, but the film completely loses its way, suddenly becoming a fantasy thriller instead of a horror movie.
As the story races clumsily through the month the traditional tension of the hunted humans uniting for their own safety, their fear growing as one by one they are knocked off in grizzly circumstances, drowns under the conflicting plotlines.
'30 Days of Night' should be the perfect horror scenario - a group of small town people trapped in darkness, fighting to avoid being devoured by vampires - but it misses the opportunity.
The film is badly edited and at times one wonders if director David Slade shot the whole 30 days and then plucked random scenes to fit the 113 minute running time, leaving nothing but a bloody mess.
Stars Hartnett and George fair well as the typical, earnest horror heroes with relationship issues to resolve, but even Foster and Huston's performances fail to rescue this dying story.
But as this year's Halloween release - to satiate audiences' appetite for gore and monsters - the film is already fairing well at the box office, going straight to number one, taking $16 million in its first weekend in the US.
Everyone wants to go and see a scary movie around October 31, it's just unfortunate this one will leave you disappointed rather than quaking in your boots.
This is not the first Halloween airing for Hartnett, who made his film debut in 'Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later' in 1998 as Jamie Lee Curtis' son.
The movie - the sixth sequel to John Carpenter's classic 'Halloween', but only the second to star Curtis - was hardly a classic but at least it stuck to the slasher film blueprint.
Curtis, Harnett and a few other victims-in-waiting are holed up in a remote boarding school during the holidays but psychotic serial killer Michael Myers has tracked them down and is planning a gruesome revenge on the babysitter Laurie Strode who foiled him in the 1978 original. However, first the viewer is treated to a series of horrific murders.
This is the basic element that '30 Days of Night' seems to have missed.
Horror films don't need to pull any surprises, everyone knows that at some point the killer - be they psycho, vampire, werewolf, monster or alien - is going to jump up on whoever is foolish to wander off alone, whatever the scenario and no matter how little clothes they have on, and attack them.
Early horror films allowed the audience to fall into a false sense of security before building the tension and providing a massive shock. Now everyone knows what to expect it is about teasing the audience as to when and how that moment will come.
Arguably it all began in 1960 with 'Psycho'.
The movie was directed by Hollywood legend Alfred Hitchcock who perfected the art of making what you don't see the scariest thing of all.
Less than 30 minutes into the film Marion Crane, a criminal on the run, is enjoying a shower in her hotel room. Naked and relaxed she is at her most vulnerable. Suddenly the shower curtain is ripped back to show the silhouette of an old lady and the glint of a large kitchen knife.
As the knife moves up and down repeatedly in a stabbing motion - for two minutes and with 50 cuts to be precise - you know that Marion has been brutally killed, and yet you never actually see the blade penetrate the skin. It has since been proved, via frame-by-frame analysis, that the knife does enter the flesh a fraction of an inch for just three frames of film, around one eighth of a second, leading some critics to argue the image subliminally enters the viewer's mind.
Of course many horror film fanatics delight in the gore found in such classics as 'A Nightmare of Elm Street', 'Hellraiser' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' but the true ability to scare your audience comes in what you don't see. Because what the audience sees in their imagination will always be the most terrifying thing of all. This is a technique perfected by Hitchcock and is also used to brilliant effect by M. Night Shyamalan in 'Signs' and 'The Village'.
Another classic element to a horror film is placing the heroes in the most vulnerable situation possible, 'The Shining' being a excellent example.
Jack Torrance - played by Jack Nicholson in the defining role of his career - takes a job as an off-season caretaker at a remote hotel and takes his wife and son with him for the winter.
However, unknown to Jack the hotel is haunted and as things get increasingly more bizarre and life-threatening there is nowhere to run.
The trapped in isolation theme is also a common scenario in zombie movies, such as 'Zombie Flesh Eaters', 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead'.
In 'Dawn of the Dead' a group of strangers unite and seek refuge in a shopping mall after the world becomes overrun with the undead. The gruesome depiction of hideous zombies munching on human flesh - special effects expert Tom Savini used his own experiences of wounds and corpses from his time serving in Vietnam to make the decapitated limbs and dismembered bodies look as realistic as possible - is sure to have viewers hiding behind their cushions. But it is still those creepy moments of waiting, just knowing there is soon to be an attack, that makes the audience quake the most.
If a film is marketed as a horror movie, everyone knows there is going to be an attack, so waiting for it to come is where the tension lies.
'30 Days of Night' has plenty of opportunity for those spine tingling moments, but it skims over them and lets them get buried in the conflicting storylines.
It does try to include an element of gore, but it's hard to believe that creatures who live by drinking blood would let so much go to waste, splattering it all over the place. If you are a horror movie fan and have seen the trailer for this film, what you are imagining it is like is sure to be far scarier than the film itself.
Most of us like a good spooking on Halloween, and if that's the case, rent one of the classics on DVD and don't got to the cinema to see '30 days of Night'.
|
|
|