TITLE: Daybreakers
STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill
DIRECTORS: Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig
STUDIO: Lionsgate
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 98 min
RELEASE DATE: January 8, 2010 (Theatrical),  May 11, 2010 (DVD/Blu-Ray)

By Stephen McCarthy
Staff Writer, Evil Genius

This is movie is a welcome move twist to the world of dull, predictable, cliché and needlessly violent vampire flicks. That isn’t to say that this film isn’t needlessly violent or cliché at certain points, but the story is a refreshing take on vampires. While vampires still require blood, burn in the sunlight and cannot take a massive splinter in the chest, it is their existence and world that is new and refreshing. This vampire movie moves away from the purely mythological aspects of the vampire and goes in the same direction that zombie movies have over the past twenty or so years. Vampirism is caused by a virus and it has spread across the globe.

While vampires and viruses more or less met in I am Legend and similar stories, the creatures portrayed in those movies lost their humanity and became brainless monsters with a rudimentary society. Daybreakers goes in the opposite direction; modern human society has morphed into a modern vampire society. The movie takes place roughly 10 years into the future and the technology seems to have advanced just about as much as it should. Instead of getting up at sunrise to go to work, everyone gets up at dusk. The evening coffee has blood in it to get that vampire on the go moving after a long rest. Windows on houses and cars can be turned completely black to prevent sunlight from getting in. This is a creative modern vision of what the world would be like with only vampires and it is a more than welcome into this sub genre.

But with the world nearly completely turned into vampires a problem arises: the blood supply is running out. A giant corporation treats humans like food, from hunting them down to keeping them hooked up to machines to draw a constant stream of blood from them. The blood supply is starting to be rationed out and smaller, poorer nations are falling into ruin. In this way the crisis seems to resemble a possible outcome if oil wells were to suddenly start drying up. This whole scenario would obviously begin to cause mass panic and the search for an alternative food supply/energy supply would begin to become all the more desperate.

Photo from RottenTomatoes.com.

Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawk) is a genetic scientist working for the corporation who has been working on trying to create a synthetic blood substitute and time is running out. Through a series of events he ends up meeting a human, Lionel Cormac (Willem Dafoe) who was a vampire, but was cured. This leads him to believe there is another way to save everyone and turn society back to its former self of nearly a decade ago.

This is an effective premise and Dalton is more than just the guy who can do the job. He has a brother who is a human hunter employed by the corporation and they do not see eye to eye on the profession. He talks of a humanity that he can barely remember and while his brother embraces the new world. An emotional roller coaster this is not, but Dalton is a good fun character rather than a stiff one dimensional one.

But what really dooms a movie with such promise is the final act. The last twenty minutes devolve into a pointless action sequence where many of the characters are killed and it feels like they felt they had to do this to appease fans of vampire and horror movies. The approach that was so fresh has devolved back into what it was attempting to separate itself from. I am Legend suffered a similar fate but the characters and message were strong enough to over come the big loud finale. On the other hand, Daybreakers needed the ending to complete itself and escape mediocrity.

Bonus features on the DVD include a “Making of Daybreakers” featurette, commentary with the directors and creature designer Steve Boyle.

RATING: 6/10