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Rating: It often happens that I let myself be fooled by reviews, by another person's opinion about something. If well argued, even crap can appear to me in a completely different light and arouse no small interest. It's not about filling voids, uncertainty, or lack of experience, just simply a "I trust" in the reliability and the supposed (literally) integrity of the human opinion towards a given object or artifact. Recently, I've seen quite a few positive reviews about 30 Days of Night circulating, enthusiastic here and there and so on, both on specialized sites (www.splattercontainer.com) and not. I watched this movie yesterday, and to be entirely sincere, it bored me to tears more than anything has in a long time. What can I do? Certainly nothing, if I'm evidently too picky or whatever other devilish dialectical nonsense, moving towards liters and liters of opinionated drivel. I should correct my aim, retrace my steps, and stop recommending movies I've never seen just because I'm driven by bloody review hype.
Since, apparently, it's now well established that today's horror audience, devotees of whatever pops up on various forums months before the actual release of films, strive to praise products that, in the vast majority of cases, will turn out to be authentic sub-par American nonsense, competing on who is already more satisfied with the movie not yet seen. These are certainly characters to admire in that they are wholly the architects of their own satisfaction. And so it will be. Even if by ways and reasons that remain totally unknown to me, decidedly "decisively" (like the "know-it-all" category but less demanding than the rest of the contemporary audience, simultaneously present past and way past), I can't help it if in these lines I also turn my j'accuse towards a large part of the horror cinema-viewing community, from whom I want my 6 euros and fifty cents back. Because the many (...few) who yesterday managed to remember to watch this movie along with me last night at Cinemondo in Cagliari, besides a surprisingly tolerant audience of young punks who along with me (and who knows if even "with me") explored the embarrassing mechanics of the new modern Dracula imagery (dirty long hair, ecstasy-rotted teeth, gazing lost into a sweeping void and winking from three-quarters off-screen, to us, and then off-screen again of the vampire leader) like the now rock-solid stereotype of horror from (and to) 28 Days Later to us. It wasn't hard at all to rename everything in a proven and probable "30 Days Later" and mimic the Sri Lankan accent of these pre-diegetic twilight vampires as "oh screw it...". Anyway.
The fact is that you really need to have so much, but so much to give to a film to immerse yourself in this colossal heap of misplaced occasions and spectacularly disappointed expectations. The suspension of disbelief of early cinema can only blush in front of the premises (read: the technical requirements) necessary to enjoy a film like this. And don't fold your arms in misunderstanding. I don't love the gratuitous bashing. Like for the film critic of CITY, also for me "every takedown is an act of love betrayed". And I have other things to do than dig biological graves against this or that thing. Mine is rather a disappointment due to the presence, although present, of good shots and undeniable ability to present stories on celluloid, against a "everything and too much misused mess" never before so blatant and frantic. Almost as if being and part of this cultural revival of an eternal and unshakable (and now it seems uncontrollable) already past present, contemporary unto the commercial, and permissive to the point of exalting crap of the kind, people are still impressed, fascinated like the audience of the theaters that were of the cinema of the Lumières (and the Pathés, and the Méliès) in an almost archetypal "I'm amazed at the train arriving as I'm amazed at the vampire coming at me". But even now over-used Sixth Sense-like clichés like the sudden loud volume, feral screams, blood on snow (which actually in some sequences is really not bad, but we stop there) the taboo of the infected annoying child whose head MUST be cut off, or the intimately infected friend whose head MUST be split in two with an ax (but not before scolding him for not defending his family).
No, my dear gentlemen, all this not only is not enough, but it's ridiculous. And I refuse. Despite and indeed because of the nice splattery scenes. Because everything is technically flawless. Because despite the mastery of technique, I wonder why, still, on the brink of 2008, do I have to struggle so much to enjoy a bit of blood anyway due? Why set up a plot as simple and predictable as it is foolish and untenable? It might be objected that the film is based on the comic of the same name, and hence I should have expected a silly, infantile, didactic, and moralistic story as typical of comics. Okay, but why make the characters undertake crazy and suicidal actions suddenly and without any explanation? Imagine the situation: the group is obviously safe, with the vampires outside massacring people and who have been stalled for over a week. Nothing has been happening for a while. And okay. Temporal ellipses that are just a damn sign. And good. The demented old man and his foolish son pass. And okay. But why allow the group to separate in the midst of calm?? Why make them say "we are not safe here"?? But how, excuse me?? But if you lived for 13 days in a damn supermarket, now what need do you have to go outside and split up?? Why were you made so stupid?? Or what's the point of the scene of the big man going berserk on vampires with bulldozer and rifle collecting heads and bodies to then willingly crash into a house destroying the bulldozer and himself, only to blow himself up with dynamite?? No. No, really. These things not only disgust me, but make me see between the lines (in this case between frames) a man crapping into an abyss with people watching. Reason for which enough, really. Enough of these damn movies like 28 Days Later. Because even the ending is obscene (and don't worry about any spoilers, because it's such a huge nonsense that I won't even bother).
6 euros and 50 cents down the toilet. Free.
And at this point I wonder how many billions are in the sewers.
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