Review of Daybreakers (2010) by Steve G — 26 Mar 2011

I would love to see what Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright could have done with this movie. The premise of DAYBREAKERS would make for a raucous and insightful horror-comedy, if only the filmmakers hadn't chosen to shoot it with such straight-faced gravitas. The film is stylish and, in this age of sparkly, angsty pseudo-vampires, admirably gory, but good LORD, is that set-up hokey. It's the worst brand of lazy what-if scenarios, coldly calculated to appeal to the obnoxious vampire trend that was particularly prevalent at the time of it's release. Most egregiously, though, the movie is just really damn boring.

The set-up: the world of the future has been overrun by vampires, and the blood supplies necessary to keep them alive and civilized are dwindling down to dangerous numbers. There are only a few natural humans left, and they live in hiding while a greedy blood magnate (Sam Neill) seeks to hunt them down. In the meantime, Ed (Ethan Hawke), a vampire hemotologist, seeks to synthesize a viable blood substitute, while stoically refusing to drink human blood himself, despite the scientific proof that a shortage of human blood reduces vamps to feral, movie monster types. Before long, Ed encounters a band of human survivors, led by Elvis (Willam Dafoe), a human who claims to have formerly been a vampire. Now, they must seek to find a cure to restore humanity, thus solving the blood crisis.

DAYBREAKERS adheres to a tried-and-true vampire mythology: invisible in mirrors, burn up in sunlight, stakes to the hearts, all of that. This can often be the cause of a number of unintended laughs, like businessmen demanding more blood in their coffee, headless suits seen driving cars in the rear-view mirror, or a big poster of a vampire Uncle Sam asking citizens to joing the vampire army. Similarly, the actors parade around the majority of the movie in awful looking yellow contacts and fake vampire fangs. If the film had any kind of sense of humor, this could have been a lot of fun. But it plays it straight, and even tries to be emotionally involving, though the actors are quick to shoot those efforts down. Hawke and Dafoe and Neill are all fine actors that are very clearly phoning it in, but who can really blame them? There's nothing tangible to grasp on to these characters, especially when one has to claim to be a "vampire hemotologist" and is expected to keep a straight face.

I will give this to the directors, The Spierig Brothers of Australia: they've made a damn good-looking bad movie. There's a lot of stylish camera work and a nice not-to-distant-future, Sharper-Image feel to the sets. The cinematographer makes good use of light and shadow, and there are some bravura slow-motions sequences that catch the eye. The premise is hokey as all get-out, but there are some intriguing themes buried very, very close to the surface that could have been explroed more (debt crisis, homelessness, addition, etc.). It might even have worked, if it hadn't been so dreadfully dull. The film tanked, so there's a pretty good chance that most people have already skipped it, but just for good measure, I encourage you to skip it.