reviewed by Charity Bishop
     

Vampires have fascinated and frightened audiences for generations, tales of immortal and violent adversaries that represent the walking dead. Some films romanticize their plight, others establish a prevailing struggle between good and evil, and still more cast them as heartless, ill-intentioned fiends. Daybreakers falls into the latter category but while it remains engaging, it never quite manages to become a truly decent film.

The future of the human race lies in peril since an outbreak of vampirism has swept the earth. The vast majority of those who survived are the walking dead and with an ever-diminishing supply of blood, the vampires are hunting down and harvesting humans to continue their source of nourishment. But with so few humans left, the situation has become dire, forcing them to search for alternatives. A powerful company headed up by the formidable Charles Bromley (Sam Neil) is attempting to create a synthetic substitute. In charge of this research is the supremely talented but reluctant vampire Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), who abstains from human blood and thus has begun to change due to his hunger. When deprived of blood for a significant amount of time, vampires return to their feral roots and go mad, sometimes feeding off other vampires and thus poisoning themselves. One of the early indications of this is disorientation, something Dalton experiences when he has a near-fatal accident with a passing automobile. He discovers the passengers are humans and assists them in escaping from the police.

Knowing they can trust him, the humans return and plead for his assistance in finding a cure for vampirism. The leader of their group is a man (Willem DaFoe) who successfully reverted from vampirism back into a human, but he cannot recreate the sequence of events behind it. Dalton is forced into hiding and determined to help them, not realizing that his own immortal brother (Michael Dorman) has been sent to stop him. Daybreakers is original in the sense that it creates a world in which humans are the hunted and vampires dominate, which is something we have not seen before. In most films in the genre, the vampires are a hunted and despised race or the vast majority of humans are simply unaware of them. The combination of this switch as well as surreal and haunting landscapes that represent the eeriness of having only night walkers in authority (abandoned main streets in day light, glowing eyes watching from subway tunnels) do set up a melodramatic and haunting stage on which the film plays out. Unfortunately, two things prevented this from being a likable film.

The first one is a flaw in the writing, which never truly allows us to connect with many of the characters. Our interest in seeing Dalton succeed is there but the villain in the form of Charles Bromley is under-developed and thus Neil is not used to his full potential. Admittedly, I'm a little prejudiced since I have enjoyed his talent since childhood, but traditionally he has more to work with. His motivations are clear but there is no emotional aspect to any of those involved, so it's hard to care about most of them. The acting is quite good and the special effects (albeit extremely gory) are very well done. Which brings us to the second thing that diminished my enjoyment: the violence. Occasionally there would be meaningful moments but shortly thereafter would appear a gruesome scene to detract from it. There really is none of the romanticism usually associated with the genre and instead the writer / directors go for all out gore, reducing it to a straight out horror movie more than an immortal battle. The reverted vampires are flat out disgusting -- bat-like and grotesque -- but watching them be sliced open, spraying blood in all directions, or incinerated into burning skeletons is not my idea of fun.

Our first introduction to the gore comes in the first ten minutes, when an experiment goes wrong and a vampire explodes -- bathing his companions and the entire room in blood. From there, it simply escalates into decapitations and severed limbs, violent vampire attacks in which the veins of screaming vampires and humans alike are torn open, and floods of blood. One vampire-turned-human has his head literally ripped off; starving vampires turn on any humans in their midst and slaughter them en masse in a desperate desire for blood. We watch a young woman being viciously bitten and left to bleed out on the floor; when she refuses to "turn," she is shown poisoning herself by gnawing on one of her own limbs. Vampires are hit with arrows into the heart, which then cause them to explode in a fireball; others are thrust out into the sunlight and burst into flames. Humans are shot with knock out darts and fed upon. One of the heroines is shown with her wrists pinned to a chair, a letter opener stabbed through each of them, as her blood drains onto the floor. There is about fifteen uses of the f-word, four of GD, and other profanities. On several occasions we see into the farming room, where naked humans are hooked up to machines that drain them of their blood (lower parts are obscured, but there is some upper female nudity). It's obvious in one scene that a woman is not wearing a bra.

It could be argued that there is an underlining message about consumerism and greed, since it is the latter (as well as a desire for revenge in one instance) that bring about the eventual downfall of the main villains and their associates. It's also possible that Bromley represents in general "evil CEO's" and thus there is a subtle anti-corporation message. It also must be said that in the end, one character does have a change of heart and sacrifice his life for the others. Unfortunately, the bloodbath prevented me from truly enjoying what could have been an intriguing exploration of an alternate reality. More violent than most in the genre, if you are in the mood for a vampire thriller that is a bit less gory and has a much better plot, I would recommend Underworld as a reasonable and far more memorable alternative.