“Daybreakers” injects just enough fresh blood into the vampire genre to make it worth your while again.
After the romanticized hype of the Twilight series, “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries,” smart and stylish vampire classics such as “Queen of the Damned,” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and “Interview with a Vampire” seemed a cinematic thing of the past. That is, until “Daybreakers” took to theaters last month.
The vampire sci-fi thriller was written and directed by Australian brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig (“Undead”) and employs the acting of Ethan Hawke (“Training Day” and “Dead Poets Society”), Sam Neill (“Jurassic Park” and “Event Horizon”), and Willem Dafoe (“Shadow of the Vampire” and the “Spider-Man” trilogy).
In the futuristic world of 2019, a mysterious plague has swept the human populace and converted human beings into pale-skinned, blood-sucking, night-walking vampires. It is a seemingly post-apocalyptic world with deserted streets and empty buildings, but when the sun sets, the city comes to life and the ashen-faced vampirical citizens take to the streets.
Subways have been converted into “subwalks” that allow for underground city-wide transportation safely out of sunlight. Billboards advertise “Infinitywhite,” a specialized makeup foundation for vampire women. Vampirism has become a modern way of life.
But underneath this chic modernity of nightlife: vile, devolved vampires driven mad by starvation known as “subsiders” are beginning to terrorize the city. People begin to question whether the presence of blood-starved subsiders are linked with declining human populations and hence, the growing scarcity of blood. The subsiders are growing in threatening numbers, and human populations that once nourished vampire need for blood are dwindling into extinction. With blood rations and violence on the rise, human-farming seems no longer to be a sustainable option. There is a need for a sustainable blood substitute.
Enter the character Dr. Edward Dalton (Hawke). Unlike his Twilight counterpart, this Edward does not sparkle in the sunlight. A vampire gone vegan, Edward’s sympathy for humans juxtaposes his hematology work for a pharmaceutical company well-known for its human-farming techniques, Bromsley Marks Corporation. The company is headed by Charles Bromsley (Neill), a bloodsucking businessman whose cancer was cured when he turned to vampirism. He sees vampirism as a cure for mortality in itself and he admits to sacrificing his relationship with his human daughter to do so.
The doctor has been working under the employment of Bromsley Marks to discover an artificial blood supply to satiate vampires’ thirst for blood. On the way home from yet another unsuccessful trial at the lab, Edward has a chance run-in encounter with a covert group of humans. He steers the police in the wrong direction, giving them the chance to flee.
Led by a woman named Audrey (Claudia Karvan), this small ragtag team of humans approaches him with a secret: they have found the cure to vampirism and the cure, oddly enough, is just the right dosage of sunlight. Elvis (Dafoe) is living proof of the effectiveness of the cure: a born-again human after a car accident left his formerly vampire self exposed to sunlight.
From this point on, the movie is a routine thrill chase as Edward and his human co-conspirators keep it one step ahead of vampire authorities as they experiment with the secret cure and the underground vampire world is overrun with subside monsters and blood-related crime.
“Daybreakers” sinks its teeth in the cinematic vampire genre. It is both a biting political and ethical commentary complete with the gore, mayhem and dark humor a theatergoer can expect from a vampire thriller.
While I don’t recommend this for fan girls on Team Edward or Team Jacob, for everyone else who is on Team Sick-of-Twilight, this is just the thing to put blood back in your cheeks.
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