In the “Daybreakers” future, the vampires have it all worked out.
No longer just nocturnal, they now run the show — day and night.
They’re not “cursed.” Not in their own eyes, anyway.
Immortality and designer clothes, there isn’t a “True Blood” Louisiana
redneck vampire to be found.
Can’t drive during the day? Fit cars with blackout windows and drive by video screen.
Need blood? It’s farmed in gigantic dairy styled
processing facilities where the few surviving humans are captured and
then sucked dry.
But that blood supply is about to run out. For the blood baron (
pale and fanged). Edward will find a blood substitute, something they
can bottle like pinot noir, something red and yummy that Vampire Planet
can spritz into its morning espresso. Something that will keep all the
vampires from devolving into gnarly, uncivilized wraiths, preying on
one another and ease Edward’s anti-blood sucking conscience.
“Daybreakers” is a stylish but unavoidably silly sci-fi vampire thriller shot in that “Matrix” / “Gattaca” futurescape of
German co-directors, the Spierig brothers, dazzle us with the
inventiveness of this post-human world where Uncle Sam has fangs
(“Capture Humans!” read the posters) and that line at the coffee bar
could turn deadly, and not just because these blood-suckers need their
caffeine.
Then Edward stumbles into the human underground (
survivors holding out against extinction. Whatever the movie was, it
becomes a too-conventional hunters-hunted “rebels” tale with Hawke
stuck listening to human lines like these:
“We’ve been searching for vampires we can trust.” And “My friends call me Elvis!”
The best scenes are between Hawke and Neill, who
wears a mean pair of fangs and makes their moments together sort of a
“Job Interview With the Vampire.” Neill almost makes the environmental
parable at play here (greedy capitalist using up resources) work.
But those moments are lost once the standard issue
explode-in-sunlight/stake-through-the-heart business revs up.
“Daybreakers” reminds us that from “Twilight” to “Underworld,” “True
Blood” to “The Vampire Diaries,” this is one genre where supply has
utterly overwhelmed demand.
Daybreakers
1 1/2 stars
Cast:
Director: Michael and Peter Spierig
Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Industry rating: R for strong bloody violence, language and brief nudity
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(c) 2010, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).
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