What’s the antidote for a spate of juvenile stories about sparkly, emoting vampires? A well-executed, back-to-basics blood-sucker thriller aimed squarely at adults, featuring a cast that’s famous for being talented instead of famous for being famous.
To this end, the Spierig Brothers (directors of 2003’s gory Undead) give us the roundly enjoyable horror-thriller mash-up Daybreakers, turning the traditional vampire fable on its head by populating the world almost entirely with the undead. (Early on we see a homeless man carrying a cardboard sign scrawled with the words, “Hungry, will work for blood.”)
Ethan Hawke stars as Edward Dalton, a leading hematologist (and vampire) under pressure to create a blood substitute since the real thing is no longer readily available, humanity having dwindled into scattered groups of armed, rag-tag survivors evocative of the Terminator universe.
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Daybreakers Directed by Peter & Michael Spierig.
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Indeed, Daybreakers wears its influences on its sleeve, showing giant refrigerator farms full of lolling, lifeless humans being drained of blood to feed their overthrowers, Matrix-style. Another central element is the fate of vampires who run out of human blood without a substitute available: they mutate into deformed, bloodthirsty monsters and become dangerous even to vampires – just like victims of the Reaper virus in Blade II.
But if anything, what saves Daybreakers is precisely that it does not try to do anything wildly new and original. Rather than throw the audience any eleventh-hour curve balls or retroactive revelations, the Spierigs focus on telling a mediocre story really well, relying on their initial world-building to provide the requisite twist on the genre.
This means that the vampire boss is not the usual cult leader figure, but rather a well-dressed – and slightly unhinged – corporate type, played by Sam Neill with a subtle air of dignified menace (this is what Avatar needed instead of Giovanni Ribisi’s near-adolescence in both appearance and behaviour). It also means that our heroes are not the usual wise-cracking musclemen, but a motley crew led by a man nicknamed Elvis (the inimitable Willem Dafoe).
By the end, of course, our protagonist has made his way from the inner sanctum of vampire bureaucracy to the hideouts of the human resistance and back again, found the potential for romance, and – with a little help from his friends – killed a lot of bad guys (in this universe, slain vampires explode like the victims of alien weaponry in District 9). But along the way are some riveting action set pieces, a few genuinely creepy moments, and a full helping of grim social commentary.
Daybreakers won’t be remembered for its trend-setting iconography, the way 1998’s Blade was (although it features some awfully nice cinematography by Ben Nott, particularly the many lingering shots of fire). It won’t win attention for reinventing the genre, the way Let The Right One In did upon its 2008 North American release (although the 18A rating is sure to rope in the adult horror crowd). It doesn’t even have a memorable score, though composer Christopher Gordon did conceive a few choice musical cues worth noting.
But the acting is great, which is unusual for a vampire actioner, and the Spierig Brothers really throw themselves into the story with such aplomb that it is rather difficult to hold anything against Daybreakers, lacking as it does any major shortcomings.