Daybreakers-2010
Ever since Stephanie Meyer's abortion of young adult novels, the world has become overwhelmed with love for vampires. The pasty complexions, their cold demeanors, their desire to drink blood...what angst filled pre-teen girl wouldn't love these bloodsuckers?
Popular culture has become inundated with these night dwellers. True Blood and Twilight have made them popular, while smaller films such as the spectacular Let the Right One in and Chan-wook Park's Thirst have attempted to take deeper, more deconstructing looks at these creatures that have come out of nowhere to dethrone zombies as the current monsters of choice.
With that comes Daybreakers, which seems like it should be coming from an experimental, high concept idea, which looks on the outside like an original thought, comes off as a cheap B-movie.
In 2019, vampires have turned most of the human race into their own type (my guess is the reason for it being so recent is the successful Twilight series. Just a guess). Now as the humans are becoming extinct, vampires must search for new ways of sustaining themselves. Ethan Hawke plays Edward (seriously), a scientist who is tasked with trying to create a blood substitute. The company he works for has been using humans in blood farms, and now facing bankruptcy, Edward is their only hope.
After helping a group of humans, Edward is considered a possible help to a small group of humans attempting to find a cure to their small numbers and to the end of vampirism. Led by Lionel 'Elvis' Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a former vampire himself, Edward helps solve the problems of the vampires and the humans.
The concept of an almost all-vampiric world is promising, but the lack of believability is ludicrous here. The film makes us believe that there is only one company who seemingly has a monopoly on the blood market. And with the right amount of shade, vampires have no problem in the sun; a simple hat will suffice. Even more ridiculous is the simplistic way to 'solve' vampirism. I'll just say, Bram Stoker would be embarrassed.
The cast isn't helping much either. Dafoe as 'Elvis' is having a good time, but he's the only one. Every line is seeping with Southern drawl and one-liners that scream for you to remember that he comes from below the Mason-Dixon line. Hawke is as good as he can be with the terrible dialogue he is given and Sam Neill as Charles Bromley, the head of the corporation creating synthetic blood is pretty tame for what I would consider an "evil vampire".
"Living in a world where vampires are the dominant species is about as safe as bare backing a 5 dollar whore."
The wise words of Elvis (Dafoe).
Daybreakers does try to do something different and its attempts at originality are a good start, but it's hard for writer-directors Michael and Peter Spierig to back up the unique ideas they have. In the hands of a more experiences writer-director, Daybreakers could have been more than just scraping the bottom of the barrel for the remnants of the vampire fad.
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