Daybreakers
Works brilliantly when focusing on the world as it has become - a futuristic Minority Report style city, with cars adapted so vamps can hit the road in daylight, and blood consumed by commuters as shots in coffee.
It's 2019, and in the ten years since the first bat bite, vampires have taken over the world. They are now the office workers, scientists, baristas and soldiers, while humans are an endangered species on the run; hunted, captured and literally farmed for their blood.
It's the incredibly detailed reality of undead life that makes Daybreakers a treasure for fans of the genre - it remains delightfully faithful to the vampire mythos. The lack of reflection is smartly indicated when we first meet our hero Edward (Ethan Hawke) in the reflection of his wing mirror, looking like the invisible man in his smart suit (cameras replace mirrors, solving the problem of getting ready).
Hawke always has the air of the vulnerable and haunted about him, making him a perfect vampire lead - striking, but troubled. His Edward is similar to a certain other fictional vampire of the same name, in that he refuses to drink human blood, surviving on pig's blood instead. A haematologist with a blood bank run by Sam Neill's Bromley (cold-blooded in every sense of the word) he struggles to develop a blood substitute as the world's supply becomes dangerously low. The lack of human blood causes a fascinatingly portrayed nightmare for the vampires - they mutate into deformed bat-like creatures, dubbed subsiders. These desperate creatures are responsible for most of the gross-out horror in the trailer, but in context, they're actually some of the most tragic scenes.
So the sensitive Edward conveniently comes across a bunch of renegade humans, led by the world-weary Audrey (Claudia Karvan). Once trust is gained, they reveal they have a secret weapon in the form of 'Elvis' Cormac (Willem Dafoe doing his regular wild-eyed, slightly off the rails trick), who holds the clue to saving mankind (and potential sequels). While all performances are fine, the characters are never satisfyingly fleshed out, with Edward the only one invoking empathy. Neill is a joy as the bad guy with an evil glint in his eye, relishing his supply like a fine wine as the once-civilised population is forced to lick blood off the floor.
Daybreakers works brilliantly when focusing on the world as it has become - a futuristic Minority Report style city, with cars adapted so vamps can hit the road in daylight, and blood consumed by commuters as shots in coffee. The analogy to animal factory farming is of interest - how can we feel repulsion to the callous way the undead treat the humans that keep them alive, when it happens right now? The greed of the vampires and refusal to share the planet with other species and appreciate the need for harmony makes their behaviour no more monstrous than ours. Hippy rant over. The trailer is misleading, featuring the inevitable battle scenes, which just feel incidental among the intriguing science bits. The Australian Spierig Brothers' second full feature is polished, intelligent, full of fantastic effects, beautifully shot, and much better than the unfeasibly average reviews suggest.
Subscribe to the SG News Feed
