Daybreakers
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam NeilDirector: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Year of Release: 2010
I love vampire movies, I have seen most of them. It’s been a bit overdone lately with television shows and films, the culture is getting a bit weary of it all. At this point it can be argued that vampires have been done to death, in just about any way you can think of. Daybreakers attempt at a fresh take on the subject is to transform the entire world into a society where vampires are now the overwhelming majority on the planet with humans being hunted down and harvested for their blood. The central conflict to the movie is that the vamps are running out of human blood and facing a starvation-induced mutation that essentially turns them in to the more monstrous end of the vampire legacy.
It’s a great idea and it did catch my attention. And while the movie does a good job of world-building, I wish they would have explored it more. Instead, we get glimpses but too soon we are thrust into a car-chase, manhunt scenario that shifts the focus away from vamp society on to human “rebels” perpetually on the run. The idea of our society shifted to a vampire world is much more fascinating to me than just another chase-down of fugitives. I want more vampire world twists on our own culture. I want more of our culture reflected through the eternal night and pale, blue of the vampire world. That is what is different and interesting than the other vampire sagas out there. Turning it into “humans on the run” just feels tired.
Most of the plot devices in the movie are done very simplistically and watered-down. This starts with a good idea that could have been so much better but then dumbs it down for the popcorn crowd. It will make a good cable movie, wait for it.
