Movie Review: Daybreakers

The best thing about the movie Daybreakers is seen in the first ten minutes. It's the set design. George Liddle (always good with 'dark'), does a phenomenal job creating a cold, hard, dark blue-black world. Vampires, as you know, cannot be exposed to sunlight. Skyscrapers are connected with tunnels suspended through the air, the subway system is used to navigate during the day, houses are equipped with artificial light panels instead of windows and automatic shades lower before the sun rises. It’s all surreal but believable. The year is 2019 and a virus started by a single bat bite has mutated most of the planet’s population into vampires. Vampires run the show. Humans are hunted and harvested for their blood. Real blood is the only commodity and Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), is the ‘bloodthirsty’ CEO of Bromley Marks Corporation, the company that has been producing and supplying it since the outbreak. But supplies are dwindling and his company is working tirelessly on a suitable synthetic substitute. Bromley is counting on Dr. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), vampire and chief hematologist who just happens to be a human sympathizer. The good doctor is more interested in finding a cure for vampirism then making fake blood. Either way, these are desperate times because vampires deprived of blood turn into monstrous bat-man like creatures and they are threatening to disrupt the social order. Oh brother! But in all fairness, the potential for a great story is here. It just gets bogged down with heavy political overtones and way too much blood splatter and what should be scary becomes unintentionally funny. This very nifty concept gets lost in an overblown production. The writer/director team of brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig are relatively new to the business and probably should have asked for a little help from Janice Fischer (The Lost Boys) or David Goyer (Blade). Yeah…then the movie would have been great! Daybreakers also stars Willem Dafoe and Claudia Karvan as the warm-blooded and fangless, heads of the resistance. If you are a big fan of vampire movies, and I am, see it but wait for it to come out On Demand.

p.s. There is a lot of smoking in this movie including a scene with kids smoking. Everybody who knows me knows I am vehemently, anti-smoking (read my post "Quitting Smoking" - 10/09). But the idea is, if you are already dead, what difference does it make if you smoke? In many ways the vampire concept is a metaphor for excess and clearly, that is one of the messages of Daybreakers.