Daybreakers - 2010

Yet another Vampire film clogs up an already hectic genre, with variations on variations. Over the past few years the genre has come back from the dead, just like Dracula, and already it seems as if the life has been sucked out of the genre. For every Thirst, or Let The Right One In, there is a Twilight of Daybreakers.

Conceptually, the film isn't actually too bad. Set in 2019, vampirism has all but rid the world of humans, and as such the vampires are now in danger. With the human race dwindling, blood supplies are running low and no alternative or substitute has been found or created. Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a scientist with human sympathies, whose job it is the find a suitable substitute to blood. He is joined by Willem Dafoe, a former vampire, who somehow, reverted back to being human, and now leads the resistance. The other recognisable face is Sam Neill, as the bad guy and Ethan Hawke's boss.

Daybreakers explores some interesting themes, and through some of its subplots we glimpse the potential for a quality science fiction, but unfortunately writer/directors The Spierig Brothers seem more interested in poorly concieved action sequences and excessive amounts of blood letting, so the dilemma Neill feels for his human daughter not wanting to be a vampire, or the relationship between Hawke and his brother, who turned him because he didn't want his brother to stay human, or the human survivors hiding from detection who are brutally and mercilessly hunted by the vampires, or the concept about a vampire class system are never fully explored and developed to make this film feel fresh or original enough to merit much interest. It also feels as though this film is trying to become the first part in a potential franchise, and therefore doesn't focus on telling a story which is fully contained and comprehensible.

Once Hawke's character stumbles upon a potential cure for vampirism and realises the best way the replace the need for blood, is to take away the need itself the film veers off into a pointless, senseless action. This ideais equally as interesting as the other ideas, especially, what happens to vampires who are blood deprived, raising questions about the nature of why a vampire drinks blood; ostensibly it gives them the one thing they need to maintain their human side.

The third act descends in a violent, blood letting, and the Spierig brothers seem obsessed with decapitated heads; I eventually lost count. The preposterous performances don't help, and their is no sense of emotional cartharsis, unless you find cartharsis is stupidly balletic violence.

So a film which shows some potential, but is never commited to any of the great ideas swashing around vying for attention in a film more concerned with coming across as cool as opposed to intelligent.