 Anyone who has made regular visits to the bookstore since Twilight appeared on the big screen would have noticed that vampire books are the new drug on the market. What some might have noticed is that these books, like drugs, are no good. And what's worse, the vamp-mania has reached television, and now the big screen. Which is understandable I guess. When you know people are buying something, it makes sense to sell it. Even if it's absolute garbage. Besides, I'm not here to write a review on communism.
Daybreakers is the story of a vampire named Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke, Training Day), a scientist in the year 2019, where almost the entire world is undead. The regretful vamp isn't exactly going along with the idea of exterminating the still-human remainder of the population, and has been working on a substitute for the already dwindling blood supply. But when he's approached by some surviving humans he's presented with something revolutionary; a cure for the vampire plague.
The movie starts strong and competent enough to grab our attention early on, although low on dialogue. A holistic vampiric society manages to exist without major hiccups; the key points of the myth are retained, such as their lack of reflections in mirrors and weakness to sunlight, which forces their society to make changes to suit such as cars with a heavily-tinted 'day-driving mode'.
The entire society becoming bloodsuckers doesn't go without its peculiarities, like what appears to be primary school children on the block drinking and smoking, and being driven in the sunlight being referred to as public execution.
The problem with this film is that after such a fitting start, it can't keep the momentum. We're given an interesting setting that almost doesn't have characters in it. The acting is, at best, mediocre. The thoughts, fears and interesting quirks that are hinted in the script aren't seen before or after the time you hear about them. There's no real type of relationship between characters or displays of emotion, not even between Edward Dalton and his younger brother, vampire army vet Frankie (Michael Dorman).
Maybe the deepest performance comes out of Isabel Lucas (Transformers 2), who plays the human daughter of a vampire father who wants to change her. Even that, though, is too off-balance given the actress' short play on stage and is gone too soon. The acting is on par with the portrayals of Twilight protagonists Edward and Bella. But at least there's a trend. Maybe since vampires are supposed to be soulless demons, I guess emotion is beyond their character.
The movie is imaginative in some places but goes limp in others. The society that's created around a population of vampires, and the cure for their curse, is creative. However, the poor and unimpressive script leaves a lot to be desired in terms of dialogue and character development. There are a few powerful scenes of real value, but they're sandwiched between large amounts of scare tactic scenes that exist purely for the shock value of a vampire flick.
Even the unattractive or run-of-the-mill graphics takes away from would-be gripping action scenes. And, last but not least, the potential for decent and credible acting falls short with what can only be poor characterization as well as unfortunate directing. We can see that the script was so uncreative that right after New Moon leaves theatres, we see another vampire protagonist named Edward. Coincidence? I believe not...
The concept behind the film suffers; Daybreakers is actually an analogy for our abuse of Earth's natural resources, and humans being forced to either find substitutes for precious oil and natural gas or live with the fact that it'll soon be all over. However, such a strong idea is lost under so much meaningless scares and large-scale mediocrity that they might as well have made this Edward sparkle too.
Luckily, the movie is short enough for us to recover from a bad case of nerves and another horrible vampire movie. There's pretty much nothing to pull this one out of the coffin. While some hardcore vampire fans might be glad to see that people still adhere to the rules of the myth, and some might appreciate the idea of a 'humanity' that is entirely vampiric, that feeling leaves relatively quickly. The cheap thrills they employ become less thrilling than annoying, as it has nothing to do with the main plot of the film. Stick a stake in this one.
Daybreakers
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill
Running Time: 98 minutes [1hr, 38mins]
1/5 stars
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