Movie review: "Daybreakers"

[matrixrefugee]

****1/2 out of *****

If you were worried that TwhineliteTwilight had put a stake through the heart of vampire movies, then fear not: this one puts the fangs back into the mouths of the blood-drinkers.

I was excited to see the previews for this, and it did not disappoint at all. Sure, the plot is a little thin, but the universe has been meticulously thought out.

The year is 2019 and a virus has caused a large portion of the human population to become blood-drinkers who burn up in direct sunlight and thus have to resort to living nocturnal lives. Humans have become a minority on whose blood the vampires depend, but now the number of humans is dwindling and the blood supply is running low. If a vampire goes too long without drinking blood, they start to mutate into a savage, bat-like creature. Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a medical researcher working for a pharmaceutical company which is trying to find a viable blood substitute, though Dalton is trying to find a cure for the vampirism virus. His research has hit a wall, but he manages to find a way around that wall when he literally bumps into a group of humans who are themselves trying to find support for a possible cure which was discovered by chance by a vampire who got his humanity back (Willem DeFoe). But not everyone is open the idea, particularly Dalton's boss (Sam Neill), a man so determined to maintain the vampiric status quo that he'll sacrifice anyone, even his own daughter....

The script is a bit thin in places, but the universe and the style and concepts really carry the film. Everything has been thought out carefully, from electric cars with modifications to allow for daytime driving, to underground tunnels and covered walkways between buildings, to a human blood farm reminiscent of the power plants in the "Matrix" movies (minus the red-fluid-filled body pods). It's more of a social science fiction film in the spirit of "Gattaca" or "Children of Men" than a pure horror film; Ethan Hawke has said the movie is somewhat of an allegory of wasting natural resources, though the cure for vampirism has overtones of baptism or some other ritual of purification, at least to my mind. The art design reminded me somewhat of "Gattaca", featuring retro-Forties costumes contrasted by airy architecture, with the eerie bluish lighting of the first "Underworld" movie; the daytime scenes reminded me a lot of "I Am Legend", with the city streets empty of all traffic (to say nothing of the appearances of the "subsiders", the degenerated and starving vampires).

There are a lot of horrifying images, though, so if you like your vampires cuddly, you might want to skip this one; but if you like good horror, this movie is for you. You know the ride is going to be bumpy when the film starts with a thirteen year old vampire girl writing a suicide note and walking out into the sunrise because life as a vampire -- and stuck at the same age as her turning -- has become too much for her (not played as a whiny teenager moment, but as a genuine tragedy). The bloodlust of the vampires often gets too much for them to hold back, and there's not a few splatter moments as a result. One scene in which the military tries to find a solution to the growing numbers of subsiders reminded me of the Quietus in P.D. James's "Children of Men".

And I can't help wondering if the film-makers deliberately named the hero of the piece Edward as a way to twit a certain sector of the movie-going population. If it was deliberate, more power to them.

Comments

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

Here via the Daybreakers community. This is a really nifty review, with just the right amount of summary and a well-judged context putting for the film. I hope it does well. Have you seen the Swedish film Let The Right One In? It was released in the UK after the first Twilight movie was unleashed and certainly wasn't cuddly.

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

:: Bows:: Thanks for the critique of my critique! :: Smiles:: I haven't seen "Let the Right One In" yet, though I plan to and I've flipped through the book it was based on.