“Hard Candy” director David Slade again demonstrates his substantial visual skills in the overlong, repetitive “30 Days of Night,” an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Set in Barrow, Alaska, during thirty days of the year when the sun supposedly never comes out, “Night” finds Josh Hartnett as the sheriff who tries to keep the populace that’s stayed behind intact after the attacks of a strange band of vampires, led by Danny Huston, who speak a Tlinglit-like language of clicks and growls. Melissa George, as the Hartnett’s ex, has an eye-widening resemblance, in general and in the way she’s shot, to Ellen Page, the young star of Slade’s first film. Ben Foster wreaks new tics as a Wildman who predicts the coming of the bloodsuckers, and for a moment, you imagine you’re watching “3:10 to Barrow.” Most of the movie was shot on soundstages, apparently in New Zealand, and finished in the computer, but even in the early scenes that seem shot in real locations by daylight, Slade steps hard on the digital colorization, with gorgeously grandiose clouds at dusk. One choice image: Huston daubing his side-cropped short ‘do with blood, profiled against the bones of an unfinished boat. This sort of fugitive lyricism is lost amid the mayhem. Despite moments of visual intensity and efflorescent gore, the movie’s fitful pacing and punishing length mean that very few will witness my favorite final credit of a movie in too long: “Einsturzende Neubaten logo used by permission.” 128m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Ray Pride)
