FEAR ITSELF
Season 1 Episode 6
“New Year’s Day”
Story by Steve Niles; teleplay by Steve Niles and Ben Sokolowski
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

Written by Steve Niles (responsible for the 30 Days of Night comic upon which the film of the same title was based) and helmed by Darren Lynn Bousman (who brought the second through fourth installments of the Saw franchise to the screen), this episode follows Helen (Step Up 2: The Streets’ Briana Evigan, soon to be seen in S. Darko, the Richard Kelly-less sequel to Donnie Darko), who awakens early morning New Year’s Day, to the sounds of sirens and a disaster quickly unfolding outside her apartment.
What we then get is a zombie outbreak (no further explanation required), as the narrative switches back and forth between Helen’s predicament as she makes her way to the man she believes she loves, James (Kyle XY ’s Cory Monteith), and the New Year’s Eve party she was at the night before.


Now, while “Family Man” was a Fear Itself episode that we probably wouldn’t have seen on Masters of Horror, “New Year’s Day” is a FI installment that might very well have been more effective on MoH.
Network television just doesn’t support zombies very well, considering the gore and bloodshed will naturally be kept to a bare minimum. And nobody wants neutered zombies, do they?


Sadly, Bousman’s direction doesn’t really mine the material for all its inherent tension.
Admittedly, it doesn’t help that since the zombie film is the horror sub-genre du jour, there are examples aplenty of genuine white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat deadhead thrill rides all over the place. (Not to mention that those examples will also undoubtedly sport fountains of fake blood and guts, which makes for a large portion of what we love about the sub-genre…)
And while Niles’ teleplay (co-written with Ben Sokolowski) does make a narrative attempt at something more than your average zombie movie, it’s a twist that you could see coming, thus blunting the over-all impact.
The zombies here aren’t terribly scary, either, so that’s another big con for the episode.


Ultimately, “New Year’s Day” doesn’t really amount to much, and if you’re jonesing for a good deadhead fix, you’d perhaps be better served taking in another viewing of Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake (if you don’t mind the running zombies), or Edgar Wright’s zom-rom-com Shaun of the Dead (if you don’t mind the comedy), or the 28 films (Danny Boyle’s Days Later and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Weeks Later; if you don’t mind the fact that, technically, they’re not actually zombies).
Or, you could go completely old school and dig up George Romero’s classic Dead trilogy—Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Land of the Dead is passable, but I’d steer clear of Diary of the Dead.
The Day of the Dead remake is also best avoided, though Tom Savini’s colour redux of Night of the Living Dead is a pretty good watch.


Parting shot: Reviews of a number of the zombie films I mention above are contained in the Archive.

(Images courtesy of nbc.com.)

30 DAYS OF NIGHT
(Review)

Based on the comic book limited series by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, 30 Days of Night is a tense and savage number that brings the vampire back to its more animalistic roots. No prissy, posturing, velvet- and lace-clad pretty boys with questionable sexuality lamenting existence and exuding ennui here. These undead just don’t d!ck around. They’ve got their sights set on your jugular, and director David Slade (of Hard Candy fame) takes them there with a calculated flourish.

Set in the appropriately-named Barrow, the last northern town before ice and snow swallow the land, the film runs the course of 30 sunless days, as Sheriff Eben Oleson (a surprisingly effective Josh Hartnett) tries to keep the remaining survivors alive till they get to the other side of this month-long darkness.
Among the ragged bunch, Oleson‘s estranged wife, Stella (The Amityville Horror’s Melissa George), and his teen-aged brother, Jake (Mark Rendall, from TV’s ReGenesis and Time Warp Trio).
This set-up, of course, looks pretty much like the standard horror movie of this stripe, where a ragtag bunch must stay alive in the face of a horde of monsters. And, admittedly, Slade doesn’t really attempt to transcend the genre. What he does though, is present us with a crackerjack ride that doesn’t quit, from the methodical cutting off and shutting down of Barrow during the film’s opening minutes, to the climactic sunrise.
Once the vampires (led by Marlow, as played by Marie Antoinette’s Danny Huston) arrive, Slade doesn’t let up, and there are moments when you can sympathize with our asthmatic hero.

Fortunately, the characters are given just enough humanity to keep us interested, and the narrative is also allowed to slow down at certain points to spotlight grace notes that typify the strength and the frailty of the human spirit. And though it may have been a wiser choice to have placed more distance between two key scenes, they’re still nonetheless effective in keeping 30 Days of Night a story about the people, and not the monsters hunting them.
This is so not about the monsters, in fact, that we don’t really get any answers regarding the vampires, their natures nor their origins. For the purposes of the film, this is all we need to know: they exist, and they’re thirsty. (So anyone hoping for protracted flashbacks of the vampires in frills and ruffles, sporting questionable accents, is in for bitter disappointment.)

And while Slade was certainly instrumental in keeping the film above the schlocky waters of the run-of-the-mill monster mash, composer Brian Reitzell (Stranger Than Fiction and the film version of Friday Night Lights) and editor Art Jones (who cut Slade’s Hard Candy as well) likewise contributed tremendously to make 30 Days of Night an effective creepfest, as did the sound department.
But if you still need more motivation, 30 Days of Night also boasts a commendable performance by a practically unrecognizable Ben Foster (Six Feet Under, and Angel in X-Men: The Last Stand), as a drifter whose arrival in Barrow presages the undead attack.

So go on. Get out there and see 30 Days of Night.
It’s guaranteed plasma-rich and angst-free.

Parting shot: Reviews of The Amityville Horror and The Tripper (which is produced by Steve Niles) can be found in the Archive.

(30 Days of Night UK quad and OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)