Hollywood's burgeoning library of vampire flicks gets a bloody new addition this week with Daybreakers, a grisly horror-thriller that adds a dystopian twist to the increasingly well-worn bloodsucker mythos. If Twilight is the Romeo and Juliet of the vampire genre, Daybreakers hopes to be its Children of Men. But hope, as they say, is not a plan. Nor is it a particularly effective filmmaking technique.
Set 10 years in the future, Daybreakers envisions a world in which a nasty plague has turned all but a tiny fraction of the planet's population into vampires. But instead of descending into the kind of violent anarchy one might expect after such a catastrophic event, folks have adjusted surprisingly well, retrofitting their lives to accommodate their vampiric needs. (Potentially fatal sunlight, for example, is avoided with an elaborate system of underground walkways and computerized sunrise alerts.)
But all is not well in the future vampire world. The supply of uninfected human blood, upon which the civilization depends to survive, is dwindling rapidly, and attempts to synthesize it, led by Ethan Hawke's reluctant biotech researcher Edward Dalton, have thus far proved disastrously ineffective. (A side effect of the latest blood substitute, for example, is an exploding head. Ouch!)
Dressed in a drab black suit and hat, his alabaster vampire complexion rendered even more pale by his moral objection to drinking human blood (he subsists instead on vastly inferior pig blood), Hawke's character looks something like a Hasidic heroin addict (see below). Appalled by his company's lucrative side business of imprisoning uninfected humans in vast blood farms (akin to the warehouses of "batteries" of The Matrix), he revolts against his smoothly sinister boss (Sam Neill) and joins a rag-tag resistance group led by a homespun mercenary (Willem Dafoe) who claims to have discovered the cure to vampirism.
Aside from leads Hawke, Dafoe and Neill, Daybreakers' primarily Australian cast (the film was shot entirely in Australia) stages a veritable tour-de-force of bad B-movie acting which, combined with the film's occasional subpar production values, gives it the overall feel of a low-budget late-night "skinemax" flick. In lieu of gratuitous nudity, however, directors Michael and Peter Spierig substitute copious gore, piling on the bodyparts until the film devolves into a bloody, incoherent mess.
Hollywood.com rated this film 2 stars.
Network Reviews
superb! 
Posted by: VINHELSING | 8/26/2010 4:21:24 PM
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
great!
Nothing like usual Vampire Movies. 
Posted by: briss | 3/5/2010 8:19:19 PM
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
Thought it was going to be somewhat of an action with a broader plot. The movie in general was really good. I think it could've been better tho.
Daybreakers 
Posted by: BIGRED7 | 2/1/2010 9:02:16 AM
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
daybreakers was a great vampire movie.and it was so very suspenseful not knowing what going happen next.
sucked 
Posted by: WILLD34 | 1/31/2010 9:45:23 PM
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
sucked
DayBreakers 
Posted by: ekimfbaby | 1/28/2010 8:07:36 PM
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
it was a cool concept.. wasnt a movie to die for..
Fairly engaging plot, decent directing... 
Posted by: brewzkee | 1/21/2010 4:05:39 PM
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
It's not a bad movie at all. I like the lead male/female actors - Dafoe and Karvan. It's was cool to not see the usual people playing these roles and the story itself - although not mind blowingly new - was different. A fairly engaging plot, decent directing and actors and cool cgi gore goes a long way. Thank goodness the fx has improved.
Not to sell the movie short but the movie experience will be probably be the same as the dvd. If you're a fan of horror it's worth going out to see.
Nice twist to the latest Vampire craze 
Posted by: Beach687 | 1/12/2010 12:55:24 PM
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
Definitely a different take on the whole vampire craze. This movie incorporates more traditional vampire mythology - such as no reflection in mirrors and thirsting for blood, superhuman strength, etc. But with a twist as to "the cure" to the vampire plague so to speak. The onyl cheesy thing I have to point out is this: the main character's name is Edward. Seriously? A little bit of a take-off from the Twilight franchise maybe?
Interesting Take on Vampires as a Species 
Posted by: Spencer Newman | 1/10/2010 1:40:28 AM
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
It's interesting to see the varied ways that scenes are mixed with modern and ancient almost Eastern European qualities. As far as the vampire story goes it's pretty cool. The problem with this movie comes in the obvious underlying message that corporations are only into it for the money and do nothing for mankind. In this case, the evil drug companies are the types that the typical Hollywood types want to push that they are failing to cure blood born illness' (AIDS...???) because it's more profitable to allow the disease to proliferate than it is to cure it. So some secret cure is not allowed to be known. It's pretty amazing how much Hollywood is trying to push so much of their political gibberish in movies that we actually pay to see.
Day Breakers Review 
Posted by: ETHAN101 | 1/9/2010 12:18:45 PM
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
I Thought this Movie Was So Awesome...I Relly Loved The Beginning It Was So suspenseful Not Knowing Whether What Was Going To Happen Next...so I Give
10/10 AWSEOME....
Great way to start of the New Year 
Posted by: na44te | 1/8/2010 11:19:58 AM
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
Being somewhat biased toward real Vampire Movies (sorry Twilight and Vamps Assistant) I walked into this movie expecting something great and what I got is something great. The movie shows us what it would be like if Vampires took the place of everyday people in the world. Work, shopping, schools etc all done at night of course. However due to a shortage of blood there is a search for a way to stop the extinction of Vamps.
I loved it! Ethan Hawke was as good as he can be and Willem D was tha man as usual. The story kept me interested from beginnging to end and the action scenes were very well done. Plenty of gore to fill my thirst for blood in a Vamp flick along with a great story. I highly recomend anyone who is a fan of this genre to check this film out. It's a long ways till summer so with this and hopefully Book of Eli next week I can be held over until then
