Review of Daybreakers (2010) by Jboogie D — 18 Feb 2012

With "Twilight" and "Cirque de Freak" unfairly damaging the vampire genre, this film brought back the entertainment of the genre that was long lost. Vampire flicks are supposed to be about blood, fangs, and presenting a dark story; not an albino wimp or a race with mutant powers. What this film does is bringing back the energy of the vampire genre and taking it back to it's route. This film does involve vampires, who are not pussy's, and adds in a new spice to the plot that introduces a new environment and presenting new ideas that makes this film rather unique. This rather surprised me but I never expected the film to introduce an original premise that separates itself from other vampire flicks. I really liked the futuristic world that the film portrayed and liked the fact that it didn't follow this typical human vs. vampire flick. However, despite the film bringing in a nice premise to the scene, I couldn't help but to think that the film didn't exactly bring in this fun ride and making everything enjoyable.

The plot is definitely good, but the pacing during certain scenarios was rather slow at certain points. Once again, I really liked the idea and the story that was told, but really felt that certain scenes took too long to progress and caused the film to go by rather slowly and to drastically drag. It can be the one too many dialogue, the scenes that went by longer than it should have been or the scenes that have nothing going on. Another huge flaw that you will see is the lack of the vampire entertainment that you want in this type of flick and presenting some questionable decisions made by the characters. Some of the things you will see will not make any sort of sense and were quite worthless to the whole plot. The worst has to be the daughter of the protagonist, as she isn't anything special and doesn't deserve to be worth mentioned. Without a doubt, this is a vampire flick, but it does not present the elements of the flick; in shorter terms, the blood sucking and the fangs. You do see this vampirish monster, but they only were introduced at the beginning and were immediately illuminated. I understand that these characters are not real vampires, but that doesn't mean that you can take away what is great about the genre and changing it up. It felt more like a drama than a thriller based on the lack of the thrills and excitements that the film delivers. There are some action and chases, but only a few are presented, as the rest is a dramatic tale of a group of people finding a cure. Also, one thing that I thought was very unnecessary and had no place to be in the film was the last few minutes of the film. Something will happen and everything will start to go into complete mayhem. This scene makes absolutely no sense and truly felt like it was added to the film to apologize to everyone for waiting until the end of the film in order to see the elements of this genre.

You have a good cast, but I really didn't care much about their performances and on the characters they portrayed. Ethan Hawke was just decent as the main character, Willem Dafoe was this cool character, but portrayed as this cliche guy that mainly say those one-liners that were a total miss, in my personal opinion, and Claudia Karvan and Sam Neil were good as their roles. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the film will make you care for the characters, but none of these characters are absolutely special; you may like some of them and some are good, but overall they were decent. The only character I didn't like was Sam Neil's character because of the lack of being the menacing character that you want as a villain. To tell you the truth, he wasn't exactly that menacing, as he lacked the evil vibe and didn't exactly feel like a villain; the perfect way to say it is having the storm troopers as the main antagonist of "Star Wars.".

Overall, this film is okay and I give props for the film bringing back the toughness of the vampires back to the big screen. However, the lack of thrills, excitement, and a proper ending really made this film not reach the level of the absolute best.