"Living in a world where vampires are the dominant species is about as safe as bare backing a five dollar whore."
I've been putting off my Scott Pilgrim review since I plan on seeing it again tomorrow, so that will provide a nice refresher. I watched this movie last weekend and it kind of sucked, as the above quote may indicate (that it was the most memorable line in the movie should be very telling).
Daybreakers is set in the near future of 2019, ten years after a global pandemic has turned the vast majority of people into vampires. Ironically, this future is not particularly different; people still get up and go to work (except now they do it at night), getting their coffee spiked with blood as they wait for the train. Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a hematologist working for Bromley Marks, a major pharmaceutical company that's racing to create a synthetic blood substitute to replace the rapidly dwindling supply of normal humans that the vampires feed on (all humans who refused to turn either live like outlaws or are kept in stasis in giant blood bank facilities where their blood is harvested). This problem is compounded by the fact that vampires who go too long without blood mutate into grotesque bat-like creatures called Subsiders, which is basically if like homeless people turned into superstrong zombies after a few weeks. Dalton's sympathy toward normal humans eventually leads him to team up with a group of survivors led by Elvis (played by Willem Dafoe) and trying to find a cure for vampirism.
No one can accuse Daybreakers of being low-concept. There are enough background ideas and themes in this film to make it feel overstuffed at 97 minutes long. I honestly think the premise would have been better served by a TV show, where these ideas could have been expanded upon and fully explored. I will admit that, amid all the fucking Twilight/True Blood nonsense that's been in vogue for the past few years, unattractive, cold-hearted vampires are a bit welcome. And this film certainly has ideas and style to burn. The set and wardrobe design seems to be lifted from Mad Men; the men in the film wear fedoras and everyone lives in well-manicured suburbs, creating a dark version of the 1950's American dream. Cars are equipped with 360 degree cameras and blacked out windows that allow for daytime driving and little camera/videoscreen combos in place of rearview mirrors (the whole not showing up in mirrors thing doesn't get used much anymore; I dig the video screen mirrors, but vampires not having reflections doesn't make any sense even by the standards of the supernatural. It kind of clashes with the whole "scientific explanation for vampires" that the film goes for).
The movie also attempts to be socially conscious, to varying degrees of success. The whole "blood as oil" metaphor seems like it should be painfully obvious, but it actually plays out with a bit of subtlety. The plot more directly addresses the greed of big business and pharmaceutical companies via Dalton's boss, played by Sam Neill, who is more interested in a blood substitute because of the enormous profits it would generate, rather than any concern for pubic welfare. It even makes a statement about the issue of homelessness, as I mentioned eariler, via the Subsiders.
So what was bad, if the film had all these deep social values at its core? Pretty much everything else. As I said, 97 minutes is not nearly enough time to delve into everything the filmmakers wanted to discuss. I'll never knock a film for being ambitious, even if it fails, but if you're going to create a world that's this interesting, you need a compelling plot and interesting characters to follow through it, both of which are sorely lacking here. The plot feels like a retread of various other films, Terminator, Equilibrium and Blade being the first three that spring to mind. The film is surprisingly light on action or horror, making the plot seem far more perfunctory and by-the-numbers than it needs to be. The finale is fairly anti-climactic and some of the twists that the plot takes in the back-half don't entirely make sense.
More disappointing than anything else are the characters and, by extension, the acting. I generally like Ethan Hawke in everything I see him in, but he seemed to be phoning it in pretty hard in this one. Granted his character is a pretty standard angsty protagonist, but everything from his delivery to his facial expressions just screamed boredom. Willem Dafoe, who's slightly unhinged, shotgun/crossbow toting Elvis character should have written itself, was also uncharacteristically unengaging, his humor (like the line at the top of the page) falling flat and his ass-kicking moments curiously absent. In fact, the only actor who came through in this movie was Sam Neill, who brought a nice touch of pathos to an otherwise extremely standard evil corporate villain.
I'm always ready to support genre films, even when they're less than perfect, but I don't know that I can recommend Daybreakers to anyone but the most die-hard of vampire fans. If you're looking for a vampire story where the main characters aren't all making goo-goo eyes at each other, it's worth a look, but other than that, I'd say try your luck elsewhere.
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