Daybreakers

What a cracking start to the New Year! Just when the whole vampire thing was being taken over by teenage girls thanks to Twilight – nothing wrong with that – along comes this adult rebooting of the whole theme, and it’s remarkably effective and refreshing – and bloody scary! Daybreakers is more frightening than I Am Legend, although visually similar at times, but has more in common with Near Dark, which similarly refreshed the vampire film in the 1980s. It even slots in a nod to Scanners.

From its stunning opening, in which a young girl vampire commits suicide by exposing herself to the rising sun, we are thrust into a nightmarish future after an ‘outbreak’, which has left the world populated by yellow-eyed bloodsuckers, desperate for human blood. Humans have been almost wiped out, leaving both vampires and the remaining humans desperate for a blood substitute. Doctor Dalton (Hawke) is trying to find a liquid that will solve the crisis, but the huge corporation he works for also hoards real humans in a giant lab to earn profits. Dalton has sympathy for the humans, but his fake blood has unfortunate side-effects, to say the least. Meanwhile the populace are revolting – really revolting.

When Dalton meets a gang of renegade humans, including ‘Elvis’ (Willem Dafoe) and Audrey (Claudia Karcan), he runs away to the country to try and work with them to find a ‘cure’ for the disease. However his corporation is not that keen in finding a panacea, and the MD, a gloriously seedy Sam Neill, will do anything to get Dalton back.

The problem with vampire films these days is that we’ve seen all of the clichés so many times – the sharp teeth, the yellow eyes, no reflections in the mirror, the burning from the sun – that they have become rather mundane. The great thing about Daybreakers is it takes all of the clichés and revels in them, but still manages to provide lots of shocks, scares and buckets of blood. The visuals and sound design are exemplary – there at least three big frights – and the nightmarish world is completely convincing. 

The only real complaint is that the film’s metaphors becomes so lost that it’s almost impossible to follow them through the course of the action. Is the blood shortage some sort of commentary about the world’s oil crisis, or a more personal one concerning health, AIDS, or a fear of death? It seems the film want to talk about something, but what? At one point the divide between the ruling vampires and the outcast humans seems to be about racism, then it becomes about medical companies’ corruption to gain profits, then it even suggests it’s all a nod towards the wine industry. By the end it seems to have settled on humans’ mortality as its main idea, confirmed by Sam Neill’s wonderfully weary line “I’ll survive” when asked if he’s ok after an injury.

Neill’s seediness is matched by a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal by Hawke, and even Dafoe manages to reign it in as a former vampire who has somehow become human. Australian Claudia Karvan makes the most of her chance in the female lead in this Aussie-financed production.

Don’t let the 15 certificate fool you, this is no Twilight. There is no lust or longing on show, just good old-fashioned Grand Guignol with a huge body count and some genuinely shocking moments. This vampire tale has teeth alright.

Overall Verdict: Visually stunning, gory, blood-soaked updating of the vampire franchise with loads of scares, if a slightly confused morale.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

CLICK HERE to watch the trailer for Daybreakers