Set in a world overrun with vampires, “Daybreakers” isn’t all that different from the world we live in now. Between the “Twilight” franchise, the phenomenal success of television series “True Blood” and not to mention the upcoming big budget “Dark Shadows” movie by Tim Burton it seems we can’t seem to escape blood sucking creatures either.
Written and directed by Peter and Michael Spierig, “Daybreakers” shows the aftermath of a viral outbreak that has caused almost everyone on earth to turn into a vampire.
In this world, when you go to get your coffee, you get an extra shot of blood, not espresso. But the supply of viable humans is dwindling and an evil corporation, led by Sam Neill, is getting desperate. They put it to their chief vampiric hematologist, Ethan Hawke, to find a blood substitute, because if a vampire, who normally looks human (except for fangs and eerie glowing eyes), runs out of blood, they are transformed into huge, bat-like monsters.
Soon enough, after a number of plot contrivances we can hardly remember, Hawke is drafted into the underground human resistance, led by Willem Dafoe’s Elvis, once a vampire and now back to being a human. (The process is quite literally a baptism by fire.) The team sets their sights on bringing down Neill’s evil corporation and exposing to the world that you can, indeed, become human again.
While there’s a certain amount of stylish sheen to the world that the Spierig brothers have created (they were also responsible for the reasonably assured no-budget zombie movie “Undead”), a lot of the potential for original storytelling is squandered in favor of splashy horror set pieces that deliver the goods in terms of gore, but in the fundamentals of rip-snorting escapism fun, fall flat. It borrows from a number of genre films, everything from the nihilistic tone of “Blade Runner” to the old-cars-equals-futuristic mechanized look of “Gattaca.” Yes, it’s inherently watchable. But you’ve seen it all before.
The movie doesn’t make a lick of sense, is at times quite draggy, and at a certain point seems to simply abandoned all originality, instead intent on recycling the plot and story beats of the vastly superior Guillermo del Toro vampire romp “Blade 2,” i.e. more level headed vampires versus monstrous vampires. There are a couple of cool moments towards the end, including a huge melee that’s slowed down to the point that it seems like some Gothic horror tableau. But besides that, the joys to be had in “Daybreakers” are few and fucking far between.
If you want to go to the cinema, wearing your fake fangs and drinking Tru Blood, you might have fun. But even those genre aficionados with the junkiest of taste will be put off by “Daybreakers;” it’s worse than bad – it’s boring. [C-] – Drew Taylor
