All hat, no cattle

Rating: 3/10 (4 October 2019)

I have been wanting to see this ever since it was released, struck by its intriguing premise. Fast forward 12 years and I finally do, only to find out it's a hollow mess.
First, there's no context. You never find out where the vampire clan came from or what they are trying to achieve. They speak (rarely) in guttural subtitled quips, you never know their names, and other than the leader, you can barely tell them apart except that they fall into categories like Bald Vampires, Skinny Brunettes, and so on. What do they do for the other 11 months of the year? How did they become vampires? The movie doesn't care.
Second, there's no internal logic after the villains show up. They slaughter everyone, but so violently and swiftly that you have to wonder if they even get a decent meal. Once the whole town is dead except for a few hidden stragglers, why do they stay around for another 3-4 weeks? They don't seem to be founding a vampire colony or trying to take over the arctic world. In fact, their leader explicitly commands them not to turn any of the townspeople into new vampires. Once again, no reason for this is offered.
Whenever a human ventures outside, the whole vampire clan just seems to be standing around in a loose clump in the streets, waiting (like the viewer) for something to happen. The whole movie would make more sense if the action played out over a few days of hunt/kill/hide high tension, but the conceit of using up the whole "30 days of night" forces the story to just go into mothballs until something decides to happen.
Why do we have to believe that our heroes can live in an attic for two weeks with no food or water, afraid to even sneak downstairs and use the bathroom? Then they raid a grocery store and hide out in the police station for another two weeks. The vampires with supernatural hearing and smell, scouring the town for survivors, never find them in either place until they try to move on.
Toward the end of the 30 days, the sheriff sees a signal from his deputy's house and goes to investigate. When he comes back, the survivors he left behind have relocated to the town power plant/sewage plant/whatever the heck a "utilidor" is supposed to be--sure, they had been talking about trying to fortify themselves there from the beginning, but why pick up and go without telling him or asking him? Because "Oooo, they all disappeared, TENSION!" Except he immediately guesses where they went and he's right, so no that much tension.
Then the leader decides it's time to burn the town down and move on, because the sun is about to come back. To save his estranged wife from burning to death, our hero injects himself with vampire blood and goes to fight the vampires on their own terms. Still pretty bad odds, but he wants to provide a diversion so she can escape. No worries--for no particular reason, it turns into a one-on-one duel between him and the head vampire. The whole clan just stand around and watch until the sheriff uses his new strength to punch through the guy's skull and rip out his brain. The leader doesn't say, back off, I'll handle this myself or any of that typical swaggering plot device, it just plays out as if he had.
In the meantime, the other vampires disappear and he goes to watch the sunrise and die in his wife's arms. You are left to assume that the vampires sensed the sunrise approaching and left, but no time is spent establishing this. Did one of them become the new leader? Does he have any idea what they should do next? Did they all get caught in the sunrise and die? Who knows?
The vampires speak in a foreign language. Is it Russian, because they came over the pole from Siberia? Is it Slavic because they trace their roots back to Transylvania? I found after the fact that the filmmakers invented a crude "vampire language" just to make them more mysterious and unearthly, and remove any chance for nuance or mutual understanding in the process. Even translated with subtitles, the leader's faux-profound aphorisms are dreck that adds nothing to the story. And that sums up the problem with this movie--all concept, no execution; all style, no substance; all plot, no logic. All hat, no cattle. What a disappointment after such a long wait.