Daybreakers

Daybreakers

By Jonathan Fisher, February 8th, 2010

Daybreakers is a cleverly subversive vampire movie that posits that the creatures of the night would be a lot like us. It envisions a world in which 95% of the population are vampires, after some kind of viral outbreak that occurred in 2009. Ten years on, they live in big cities, have public transportation, police and military forces. They’re even capitalists. In a society that relies on human blood for survival, it makes sense that big corporations would jump on the bandwagon and provide people with what they want -- even at the expense of finding a blood substitute, thus eliminating the need for the vast human farms that feed the population. One character in the film says, “Most will survive on a blood substitute. But there will always be those willing to pay a little extra for the real thing.”



We are shown what happens if a vampire is excessively blood-deprived. Healthy vampires in this world basically look human, except for their icy complexion and orange-tinged eyes. The longer you go without drinking blood, the more you look and act like Max Schreck from Nosferatu. Your ears become sickeningly elongated, your hair disappears, your body becomes emaciated, and the effect of the deprivation on your frontal lobe eliminates any semblance of human civility. The segment of the population that cannot find or afford blood have all turned into mindless, violent gargoyles that gather underneath subways. The healthy population call them ‘subsiders’.

This blood-deprived fate is problematic for the vampires in this world, as their human resources are running critically low, and there is only enough blood to feed the population for one month. Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a haematologist who knows just how critical the blood situation is, and is working tirelessly on possible blood substitutes. His boss, played by Sam Neill, is staunchly pro-vampire. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer in early 2008, and the outbreak of vampirism saved his life. His daughter managed to avoid being turned into a vampire, and is a member of the tiny human resistance. ‘Resistance’ is possibly the wrong word -- there are far too few humans left to mount a serious challenge against the vampires. Their focus is primarily on survival.

Dalton does not drink human blood on ethical grounds, and we wonder if he even wanted to become a vampire in the first place. When he gets into a car accident with a group of humans, he protects them from the police officers pursuing them. Inevitably Dalton and the humans cross paths again, and Dalton meets a human that managed to change back from being a vampire.

As you can probably tell, Daybreakers tries to be a little more sophisticated than most vampire movies these days. It builds a vivid, detailed and even believable world populated almost completely by vampires. It is the second feature film from the Spierig Brothers, a talented pair of Australian film-makers whose first film Undead became something of a cult in 2003. As written and directed by them, Daybreakers has real style and energy. It imparts its story as something of a parable of our own, current times, briefly tackling issues of sustainability, poverty and tolerance. Daybreakers is first and foremost a horror/thriller, though. On that level, it succeeds, with two or three suspenseful set pieces, a hero we can rally behind, and plenty of stand-alone splattering gross-out moments.

The film lags slightly in its second half, perhaps because it is torn between being a fun vampire movie or being a social commentary. As a result, it lands in a no man’s land middle ground. It’s not quite smart enough to be viewed entirely seriously, nor is it quite original enough to be seen as a ground-breaking genre film. The film’s final act is, of course, heavy on action and plot resolution, giving in to plenty of conventions for this sort of movie, and it ends on a note that just about screams out to us to wait for the sequel. But even in its down patches, Daybreakers is an enjoyable exercise in style and horror, and while it might not be the most profitable or popular vampire movie of the last couple of years, it’s a massive improvement on the competition.