Something to watch tonight: 30 Days of Night
30 Days of Night is streaming on the LionsGate (Lionsgate? Lions Gate? Lion's Gate?) Amazon Prime channel.
t’s been a good few days to see our tax dollars hard at work on international feature films – Wicker, Klara and the Sun, Wildwood – and we are also going through something of a Josh Hartnett-aissance AND it is almost Halloween, so I thought I would try and find something that reflects all of those things at the same time.
30 Days of Night was shot in Auckland in 2007, the days when internationals would only fill the main roles and there was plenty of opportunity for the likes of Joel Tobeck, Elizabeth Hawthorn, Peter Feeney and my at-the-time Downstage colleague Ben Fransham1 to show their talent.
Josh Hartnett plays another small town sheriff, out-gunned and out-matched, in 30 Days of Night. He runs Barrow, the northern-most town in Alaska, so far north that one month of the year is spent in darkness. This is the perfect setup for a smart vampire to take advantage of: 30 days of feeding with no enforced hibernation and a bunch of unsavoury characters (well-led by Danny Huston) certainly go to town. Entertaining and stylish, 30 Days goes about its work (within its genre limitations) respectably enough.
Also in that February 2008 Capital Times review: No Country for Old Men, George Clooney in Michael Clayton2, Don Cheadle as a 60s radio DJ in Talk to Me and Leonardo DiCaprio environmental documentary The 11th Hour.
Where to watch 30 Days of Night
Aotearoa: Streaming on LionsGate’s Amazon channel or a digital rental
Australia: Not currently available online
Canada: Streaming on Hollywood Suite
Ireland: Streaming on HBO Max
India: Not currently available online
USA: Streaming on Xumo
UK: Streaming on Prime Video or HBO Max
Further listening
My regular Thursday night chat with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights was even more jam-packed than usual last night as we covered Wildwood and its Portland connections, three films from the British and Irish Film Festival which has just gotten underway, the 30th anniversary of Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners and new Aussie comedy-horror series Gnomes.
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