Daybreakers

It would seem only natural, with the renewed interest in vampires and werewolves due to the recent success of the "Twilight" movies, that movie studios would try to tap into this reemerging genre. In contrast to the more romantic light that vampires have been shown in “The Vampire Diaries” or “New Moon,” "Daybreakers" returns to the darker elements of vampire lore in its quest to give the viewer a deeper movie-going experience. In this endeavor the movie falls flat on its face.

The year is 2020 and most of the world has been turned into vampires by a plague and the world exists as it once did with one major exception: everyone is now drinking blood. In the ten short years since the outbreak of the plague the world has nearly exhausted its supply of human blood. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke, "Lord of War") is a hematologist working to create a synthetic blood supply so that humans no longer need to be harvested. Unlike just about every other vampire in the movie, he has pity for the way humans are sucked dry to feed society and resents being a vampire. In addition to his moody personal issues he doesn’t see eye to eye with his human-hunting brother Frankie (Michael Dorman, "Triangle") and resents the money and power-oriented focus of his boss, Charles Bromley (Sam Neil, "Event Horizon"). After an explosive failure of his latest blood supply, Ed has a chance encounter with a group of humans led by Audry Bennet (Claudia Karvan, "The Long Weekend"). After saving them from a roaming patrol they contact him with information about a possible cure for vampirism. He meets up with Lionel Cormac (William Defoe, "Antichrist"), a vampire turned human - the key to cure. They spend the rest of the movie running from the human-hunting army and trying to perfect the cure for the rest of society.

"Daybreakers" is a silly movie that tries to take itself seriously. Apparently the writers thought that the best way to contemplate what it meant to be human was to have Edward sulk for most of the movie. There is no chemistry between any of the characters and the eventual romance that develops between Edward and Audry feels so forced that it’s hard to watch. With the exception of Frankie, not a single character is developed beyond their stock archetypes. The movie is full of extraneous side stories. One of the more ridiculous aspects of the movie was that a vampire who goes without blood for too long turns into a winged beast that resembles something out of "Nosferatu." The problem with this is that the movie spends most of its time discussing the problems that these creatures are causing and then in the course of five minutes they are all rounded up and killed, amounting to one of the greatest wastes of time in the entire movie. Another useless story was Bromley’s daughter; he spends half the movie talking about how his daughter committed suicide then we find out she is alive but then is killed a few minutes later, contributing nothing to the story line. Sam Neil and William Defoe are underused and their characters have nothing to work with to bring any redeeming qualities to the acting. The special effects were laughable, amounting to nothing more than cheap CGI and buckets of blood. Another problem I had was how apparently the whole of humanity becomes vicious individuals who are perfectly fine with killing a lot of people because they need to drink blood. It just didn’t make much sense.

In short, the movie was a long list of wasted opportunities and underused talent. It never really caught my attention as it meandered through a story that paled against the setting of a world full of vampires. If you are looking for a good suspenseful movie that touches the deeper side of humanity I would suggest "28 Days Later."

Final Verdict: 1 ½ stars out of 4 or a 60%. Get this one online for free or from Netflix; otherwise you'll be angry you spent the money

Side note: with all the names in the world they had to choose Edward as their main vampire...

-Jeremiah German