Daybreakers has a great gimmick: In the near future, a vampire plague leaves the majority of the world’s people as vampires, and the remaining humans are harvested for their blood. In the early running, the dedication to exploring such a contrary world is a lot of fun. We see vampire children checking their cell phones and vampire businessmen on their way to work waiting for the subway. One such working stiff is Edward (Ethan Hawke) whose job at a medical company is developing a substitute for blood. Time is running out for Edward and the vampire race; humans are becoming a scarcity in this new world. His boss (Sam Neill) tells Edward he has one month to find a blood alternative before the blood supply runs out and all the vampires revert to bat-like monsters.
But as much as the ads for Daybreakers would have you believe otherwise, the film’s monsters are pretty extraneous; this isn’t a monster movie. The real gist of the tale is that Edward likes humans, he doesn’t want the human race to be extinct and, truth be told, he has some serious qualms about the human harvesting that goes on at his company. Edward would rather develop a cure than a substitute, making the vampires human again. Just his luck that he should run into one renegade human – played by Willem Dafoe – who may have stumbled on just such a cure.
Beyond the set-up, it all gets a little jumbly. Bouncing back and forth from Edward to a plot regarding the boss’s daughter (who is still a human) to the unrelated monster problem, what little fun the film offered in exploring this new world is quickly bogged down by threads that go nowhere. The film strives to take itself 100% seriously and, though Dafoe and Neill manage a bit of fun anyway, Ethan Hawke’s dour expressions may make him a fine vampire, but a depressing lead. If more wit had been allowed to seep into the story, I think a lot of the more ridiculous moments could be overlooked. Most irredeemable in this regard is the overreliance on the laziest form of action writing: the ‘out of nowhere appears.’ There are better ways to end a scene than to have someone completely unrelated save the day. If you do not stay true to the progression of plot, you’re just cheating the audience.
On the plus side, the film looks great. It has that cool, monochrome look that made Blade sexy in the ‘90s, and makes the blood really pop. And blood will pop – people explode in big gooey gouts that paint the walls. If red’s your thing, strap in.
Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to capitalize on a reversal of the vampire movie. The directors – an Australian duo whose last film, Undead, was a pretty silly zombie movie – have certainly upped the ante on their resumé. Daybreakers displays a good deal of inventiveness and a lot of technical skill, but mostly shows that the pair can handle a bit of subtlety. Unfortunately, what begins with good intentions mostly fizzles by the end, as if the directors painted themselves in a corner and decided to just tip the bucket and call it a day.
