DAYBREAKERS, exploding vampires without a cause

 

Score:

Writer/director/brothers Peter and Michael Spierig have a cool premise on their hands. Daybreakers is the most interesting vampire concept I've seen in, well, a while. Unfortunately, an interesting premise does not result in an interesting movie unless there is an interesting story to go along with it. The Spierig brothers do not have an interesting story to tell. What they have is a lust for exploding bodies and gallons of blood. Seriously, gallons. 

So here's the premise. It's 10 years in the future, and a vampire 'epidemic' has turned almost everyone on the planet (earth) into a bloodsucker. Surviving humans are hunted for their blood, and their numbers are dwindling. Without Wesley Snipes to keep them in check, vampires have run a muck, and now face a world that's running out of blood.

Every one of these vampires used to be human but seem content with their new night life. Cars are retrofitted with tinted windows to block the sun and cameras for daytime driving. Loud sirens alert citizens when dawn is approaching because, as we know, vampires get crispified in the sun. The sunblock industry has yet to develop an SPF high enough to protect the undead.  

As a global society, humans are slowly sucking the life out of planet earth. If we were all vampires, I imagine we'd probably suck the blood out of it too. And when there is none left? Well, that's when we finally come up with some makeshift solution to keep our way of life going. For us humans, this might be trying to solve global warming through all sorts of crazy means or weening ourselves off of oil. For the vampires in Daybreakers, it's coming up with a blood substitute. Allusions could also be made to the food industry and drug industry. I mean, why would a blood company cure vampirism if continuing to sell fake blood (drugs) can keep the populace alive and lead to greater profit? There are good science fiction stories to be told here. 

Alas, I've already explored these ideas more than Daybreakers does. Instead, the Spierig brothers revolve their plot around a villainous corporate CEO (Sam Niell, villain) and his one noble scientist (Ethan Hawke, hero). Willem Dafoe (B-Squad) leads a gang of surviving humans who've found a cure for vampirism and our noble scientist tries to expose that cure. Does he free/save the world populace, or do the bad guys win? Usually movies like these make a choice. Daybreakers does not. It hits its 1.5 hour runtime and burns out like a vampire in the sun. This film has so little to say that it can't even muster up an ending. 

Filling the gaps are plentiful loads of blood and gore. For a society running out of blood, these vampires sure waste a lot of it. When they bite humans, gallons of blood spray everywhere except the vampire's mouths; they seem to get more flesh than they do blood. And when they aren't biting, they're exploding. (Yes, this movie has exploding vampires. Lots of them.) Some new vampire rules are invented too (new to me, at least). If they don't get enough blood, they start to devolve into half-bat, half-humanoid creatures. They do this quite quickly too. Merely skipping breakfast seems to trigger visible body changes. 

If vampires were an actual evolution of humanity, I'd like to think they'd be more like anteaters than bats. Fangs are nice for biting, but a successful species must learn how to efficiently suck up its prize, not spray it across the room. Anteaters are masters at precision. And if anteater vampires devolved, the back alleys would be full of cuddly, big-nosed mammal-people, not vicious batmen. How great and fuzzy would that be? I think I've just written an adorable sequel.

Anyway, time to summarize. Daybreakers is a messy action flick that furiously sucks the life from its underdeveloped premise. It has no purpose and no parable to tell, wishing only to explode in your face a few times and be on its way. If you like exploding things, you are in luck my friend. Here's an hour and a half of them. Have a blast.

Trailer & Poster