Poorly made film

Rating: 1/10 (9 October 2016)

Let's start with the title: '30 Days of Night'. Two problems arise instantly: 1. The idea that vampires use the 30-day period of darkness is not exploited in any kind of creative way. 2. The film supposedly takes place during the 30 days, but still feels like it takes place in one afternoon.
The characters here are dull, the antagonists are never developed and their motives and lifestyle remain obscure, it's never explained where the vampires come from or where they intend to go afterwards... The script just doesn't care one bit. There is even a character who is supposed to assist the vampires, but he is just taken out of the film before he can get a chance to do anything meaningful. Likewise, new characters are introduced at random, and the script has the audacity to expect us to care about them.
The whole film has an episodic character, jumping from scene to scene in a seemingly random fashion. I don't know whether to blame it on screenplay, direction, or editing. Probably all of the above. There is also a pervasive sense that the motivations of characters are weak and confusing at times.
Finally, the action scenes are disappointing. They are quite gory, but dull. Also, they are filmed with a shaky camera, often in closeups, and edited by a person with an attention span of one tenth of a second. The fight scenes therefore turn into a blurred mess where no one knows what's really going on. This confusion is also spatial, when it comes to action. Often times the characters split up, but one has no clue where they are in relation to each other or their destination. The whole film reeks of confusion.
One more thing: the film makes attempts at generating emotion, but fails miserably. The screenwriter seemed a lot more interested in ripping off other horror films and inserting every cliché imaginable, such as the zombie/vampire child, a member of the group who is bitten and transformed into a vampire without the rest knowing it, or the climax that takes place in a factory, with convenient grinding equipment used for mincing vampires.
On a positive note, the film does have scary moments, and it has vampires that look better than in many recent vampire films. But on the whole, it comes across as amateurish and unremarkable. No filmmaking talent spotted.