Sunday, February 28, 2010

Daybreakers

I fully support the vampire renaissance as long as said vampires are actively killing humans. None of this immortal romance; give me monsters. The twist that differentiated Daybreakers is that the vampires have won and they now control the world. It was a strong enough core idea to keep my interest all the way to the end.

Daybreakers created a futuristic world where the vampires were very business-like and wore suits, drove fancy cars, and worked at night. It was all very amusing. The cute vampire commuters taking the subway to work while drinking their coffee mixed with blood. They even had vampire 24-hour news channels discussing the vampire politics of the day. Humans were just an afterthought seen in stasis while their blood was being harvested. This idea of harvesting humanity for their blood seems to be a go-to storyline when vampires are involved. Eventually Daybreakers turned to the usual idea of a ragtag band of humans fighting back but I would have preferred to watch an entire movie in the vampire world. Ah well.

Vampire flicks always allow for some serious overacting and Daybreakers was no different. Ethan Hawke may have kept it under control and played to his strengths of pained and tormented but that just gave Sam Neil and Willem Dafoe more scenery to chew. Neil turned the lead vampire into a crooked politician while Dafoe was some variation of a hillbilly vampire. Both were definitely having fun. Not much else to report from the cast.

There was something to Daybreakers that could have been crafted into a memorable movie. That didn't happen. What we got was a few slick visuals mixed in to a paint by numbers vampire flick. Well what do you expect from something released in the first week of January?

6 out of 10

No comments:

Post a Comment