DAYBREAKERS
***1/2
It’s so rare that any movie - particularly a horror movie - lives up to the promise of a great trailer, so what a thrill it was to start 2010 with the Spierig Brothers’ fantastic futuristic vampire film Daybreakers. The benchmark has been set incredibly high for this year’s slate of horror films.
Elegantly paced at a brisk running time of 98 minutes, Daybreakers nevertheless unfolds with epic scope, presenting a 2019 where the world has been taken over by vampires, and those few humans who are left are being farmed for blood. This new world is presented with incredibly inventive detail, revealing with casual glances those advances in technology that have made the world hospitable for its sun-averse citizens, particularly in their efforts to travel in daylight. Despite their dominance and seemingly thriving new society, they are nevertheless facing a cataclysmic problem - the human race is virtually extinct, and when deprived of blood, the vampires deteriorate into raving, mutated creatures. A wonderfully original presentation is provided on the inevitability of class struggle: the film literally displays a contrast between those who live above and those who live below, as the well-dressed upper-crust shuffle about in their metropolitan wonderland as the mutating impoverished screech out for blood in the gutters below - think Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with monsters.
In response to this crisis, vampire hematologist Edward Dalton (played by Ethan Hawke, looking very much his Gattaca counterpart save for his glowing orange eyes) is working on a blood substitute in the hopes of saving the human race. He works for a blood-supply corporation run by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill, always giving it his all in genre films), who of course has less of an interest in saving human lives as he is in continuing the global success of his company, humans be damned. After a run-in with some humans on the lam, Edward finds himself pulled into a race for survival spearheaded by Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac, played with gusto by the ever-reliable Willem Dafoe. Elvis soon reveals that he’s more than just a crossbow-totin’ ass-kicker, and with bloodthirsty vamps and the corporation-controlled military after them, the group battles to survive as they attempt to get an important message to those few vampires who may care to listen and help.
A horror film this impeccably balanced is a rarity. Imaginative and clever as it may be, it is very much a monster horror film - blood and gore abound, and there are quite a few jump-in-your-seat moments that display great structure of tension by the filmmakers. Much social commentary is present but not heavy-handed - the allegories are there for those who may appreciate them, peppered throughout with little amplification. Action fans get their car chase and fight scenes, vampire fans get much neck-sucking and sunlight-combustion, gore fans will be more than satiated, and those looking for an original take on familiar themes will no doubt be well satisfied, and more than a little impressed. Engrossing and entertaining from its elegant opening credits sequence to its action-packed, blood-soaked climax, Daybreakers is an eye-popping success.
Logan Crow
January 8, 2010
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