Two-time Academy Awardr nominee Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, when an unknown plague has transformed the world's population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race.
While
Daybreakers presents vampiric traits that distinguish its vampires from others in the many films that have ridden 2009's vampire movie wave, there is a lack of humor here that makes this film sour compared to sweeter ones like
Cirque du Freak: A Vampire's Assistant. Maybe that's because the plot in this horror feature from Peter and Michael Spierig (
Undead) is more akin to zombie films like
28 Days Later. The year is 2019, and nearly all humans are converted vampires searching in vain for blood during a blood shortage, as they drain remaining humans into extinction. Nightly, CNN airs segments about the Blood Crisis, while vampire citizens around the globe attack each other like cannibals. Humans are farmed like cattle while tied to blood-draining machinery in the top-secret pharmaceutical corporation run by evil CEO Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). Sound like a heavy-handed metaphor for our oil wars?
Daybreakers can definitely be viewed in that light, as a story about greed and consumption. Stylistically, it looks like a cross between
Alien and
Batman, with its Giger-esque set design and blue-tinted hue to represent night fallen on society. The lead actors help to salvage this movie. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), chief hematologist at Bromley, straddles the vampire and human worlds, with the aid of humans Lionel "Elvis" Cormac (Willem Dafoe) and Lisa Barrett (Harriet Minto-Day), to search for a blood replacement to placate the starving masses. These three protagonists carry the film, though not well enough to call
Daybreakers any sort of genre breakthrough. --
Trinie Dalton
Stills from Daybreakers (Click for larger image) 
