REVIEW: The clot thickens

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This article was published 08/01/2010 (6091 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the recent vampire renaissance, film and TV have given us romantic vampires (Twilight), feral vampires (30 Days of Night) and assimilated vampires (True Blood).

So you’ve got to hand it to the fraternal Aussie filmmakers Peter and Michael Spierig (the low-budget zombie comedy Undead) for having the imagination to give us military-industrial-complex vampires.

Their film Daybreakers, which they wrote and directed, posits that in the year 2019, bloodsuckers are the majority after a global epidemic of vampirism. Fanged politicians debate on TV the fate of remaining humans, who are "farmed" for their blood (available at a reconfigured Starbucks near you).

The slick corporate boss Charles Bromley (a fiendishly droll Sam Neill) is content to stay the course of draining hapless humans of their blood in a sterile agri-giant facility, even as he employs scientists to come up with a viable blood substitute to feed the ever-hungrier masses.

In this cheery corporate hive, hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) toils at the task with little success — and the failures are explosively messy. A kind of conscientious objector to vampirism turned by his own soldier brother, Edward’s sympathies are noted by Audrey, a winsome surviving human (Claudia Karvan). She shows up at his apartment to recruit the scientist in a bold Hail Mary scheme that may reverse the dwindling fortunes of humanity. The keeper of that particular secret is a classic car-driving, crossbow-wielding hunka-hunk of burning macho who calls himself Elvis (Willem Dafoe).

Time is running out. Mass starvation of the vampire race is imminent. Starved vampires resemble decaying drug addicts before they devolve into "subsiders," bat-like grotesques who will feed off their own blood — and the blood of other vampires — to sate their gnawing hunger.

Shot in Australia, Daybreakers shares the admirable qualities of classic Ozploitation along the lines of Mad Max and Roadgames in that it’s fast, cheap and visceral.

The film’s satire draws blood too, given that the vampire realm is not all that distinguishable from the boardrooms, slaughterhouses and coffee stations here in the real world.

Hawke suffices as the turncoat vampire (a role not dissimilar to the genetic interloper he played in Gattaca), but Neill brings the joy as Bromley. Whether elegantly sipping one character’s blood from a wineglass or callously deciding the fate of his still-human daughter, Neill’s smugly arrogant villain suggests the main difference between a vampire and an avaricious corporate titan is only in the sharpness of their incisors.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

 

Other Voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Daybreakers. 

A darkly stylish horror film that’s unusually solid for a January release…

— Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

 

There are more revisionist bloodsucker stories out there than you can shake a stake at nowadays, and they’re getting tiresome.

— David Germain, Associated Press

 

A clever twist on the vampire legend, delivers what genre fans crave and more.

— Steve Ramos, Boxoffice magazine

 

There’s a fascinating idea at the heart of Daybreakers, where a vampire plague has swept the world and everyone’s now a bloodsucker, but it doesn’t quite make for a fascinating film.

— Helen O’Hara, Empire magazine

 

The script doesn’t wring many surprises or much character involvement from the premise, and the brothers’ helming, while slick, is short on scares, action set-pieces and humour.

— Dennis Harvey, Variety

 

A smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

— William Goss, Cinematical

 

A rock-solid afternoon-matinee sort of movie, packed as it is with so many disparate genre influences. Confidently crafted and legitimately clever.

— Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

 

— Compiled by Shane Minkin