Supposed to be one of the best vampire movies in recent times – my reaction? Meh, it’s an ok movie. Good enough but nothing outstanding although I loved some of the concepts and found certain things funny. Daybreakers is a sci-fi/horror written and directed by Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig. The film takes place in 2019 and most of humanity have been converted into vampires by a plague. So they stay in during the day time and go out and work at night. Humans have become in short supply, only 5% remain and therefore blood is also on short supply.
A corporation led by Charles Bromley (Sam Neil) is working on a blood substitute and their lead scientist is Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) a human sympathizer. Edward secretly refuses to drink human blood, and faces a strained relationship with his brother, Frankie (Michael Dorman), a human-hunting soldier.
Elvis (Willem Dafoe) & Audrey (Claudia Karvan) approach Ed to help them in their struggle to survive. Elvis is a former vampire – he found a cure for vampirism when his car crashed and he was exposed to sunlight and then fell immediately into a river. Edward experiments with the “treatment” and is cured himself. Also vampires who feed on a former vampire who has been cured also get cured. There is a side story of the subsiders; vampires who are deprived of human for too long turn into grey skinned aggressive bat like creatures who attack humans & vampires alike.
What I liked about the movie is the starkness and darkness. There is some black humour in the way that coffee shops cater to vampire with 20% blood in the coffee and when supplies fade, it is reduced to 5% blood! A little dig at coffee giants like Starbucks perhaps? There’s plenty of blood & gore, exploding body parts and blood splattering. The final attack scenes are pretty awesome, with vampires feeding on former vampires and getting cured only for more vampires to come and attack them. I wasn’t very impressed or convinced with the ‘cure’ that they come up with or the experiment but overall this is a good watch. Especially if you like vampires and that kind of stuff. I’d give it a 7 outta 10!