Daybreakers

(2009)

There are more vampire movies out there than I care to count, and I've seen a lot of them, maybe even most.  Daybreakers is unique.  It's like some gnarled love child between Equilibrium and Vampire: The Masquerade.  It's a dreary not-that-distant future setting where vampires have taken over the earth, and humans are hunted nearly to extinction.  The old, tired mythology is there, but it's not stuffed down your throat; I mean, I know that in this movie vampires don't have a reflection, and there is a method to allow them to see a live image of their own face, but not a single word is spoken about it.  There is much more attention given to daytime driving systems for cars and the blood content of coffee than how effectively staking causes final death.

The focus of the story is the starvation epidemic, and the elimination of the human food source.  After the Blade Triology (the second film has me wondering if the script was orignally written on bar napkins and old grocery receipts, half of which got wet before being typed), I really have low expectations for vampire films.  I would be lying if I said that there weren't any parts of Daybreakers that left me shaking my head, or thinking, "What a stupid idea," but the vision of the world was so complete and detailed that I felt compelled to overlook things like the military's complete lack of tactical thoroughness (I don't know about you, but if I was a vampire and I found an empty resistance hideout, I would burn it to the ground after I was done searching it).  What would newspaper headlines say in a world dominated by vampires?  Got that covered.  How would the population respond to blood rationing?  Well, there's even an interesting spin since there is a severe physiological reaction to lack of blood: you get monsters.  Now vampires hunting vampires, that's interesting.


Much of the suspense felt pretty artificial, and the action was really lacking is almost all regards, so I would say the film is a terrible thriller.  As a sci-fi, however, I was pleased.  There was no attempt at a thorough scientific explanation of the vampire condition, and there was even a mention that walking around without a pulse isn't possible, as a philosophical aside.  The finalé caught me by surprise and had the chance to be truly epic, but quickly lost momentum for no discernible reason.  Daywalkers turned out to be a mediocre movie with some fresh ideas.  Hopefully the next vampire movie that tries to reinvent the genre does so with more finesse.  A good vision and good special effects don't always mean good scriptwriting or good directing, but if you're into vampire movies, Daybreakers is worth a viewing.