Susan Granger’s review of “Daybreakers” (Lionsgate)
Now that newcomers are raking in the big bucks as vampires, it’s not surprising that older, more established actors like Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe are lining up to drink some valuable box-office blood.
In 2019, as the result of a plague, vampires have taken over the world. The few humans left are hunted to feed the undead. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is a vampire hematologist working for a corporation that specializes in blood draining, hanging humans like cattle in giant vats. Acutely aware of the blood shortage, his greedy boss, Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), is urging him to come up with a synthetic substitute so they don’t starve and mutate into savage bat-winged creatures, known as subsiders. But Edward feels survivor guilt, so when he runs into a car full of human survivors, led by Audrey (Claudia Karvan), he befriends them, hiding them from the authorities, led by Edward’s militant vampire brother, Frank (Michael Dorman). Edward even risks his own life to help their wry leader, named Elvis (Willem Dafoe), who has discovered how to make vampires human again. Eureka! A cure for vampirism!
Written and directed by Peter and Michael Spierig, German-born Australia-based twins who in 2003 made a half-baked vampire horror called “Undead,” it’s a stylish sci-fi caper, filled with yellow-eyed urban commuters working only at night, grimly lining up at curbside kiosks to quench their thirst with coffee laced with 20% blood, and sleek cars equipped with blacked-out windows and navigated by video monitors. For that, credit the detailed production design by George Liddy. But the Spierig brothers don’t offer much character development, there’s only one major plot twist, and the dialogue is vapid as the vampires who deliver it. Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe certainly do their best with what they’re given. Obviously, what interests the Spierigs is cannibalistic, blood-splattering gore – and that’s what they deliver into a marketplace that’s already saturated with vampires (“Twilight,” “True Blood,” etc.). So on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Daybreakers” is a fanged 5. Call it From Here to Vampurity.
