An antidote to too much corporate Christmas smutlz is curling up with a good vampire movie. It’s a shame that I chose this one. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Daybreakers when it came out in 2009, but on rewatching it, I’ve come to a very different conclusion.
For those who have not seen the movie, there will be blood – and spoilers. Since I doubt you’re going to watch the film after this review, I’m just going to go all out, ‘k? Daybreakers imagined the far-flung future of 2019, where the world had been taken over by corporate vampires. Not too far from the truth, to be honest. Anyway, vamps have become the dominant species, never aging, and recovering from any wound, so humans are now on the endangered list. Our main character Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is working feverishly with his lab partner to create a blood substitute for his corporate boss while the vampires of the world slowly degrade into feral monsters. However, when Dalton finds a group of human refugees, he learns that sunlight cures vampirism – the trick is to survive turning into crispy fried vampire parts in the process. Now it’s up to Dalton and his group of last desperate humans to set things right, possibly by trying to convince a world full of Anne-Rice wannabes that sunbathing is all the rage…
What does this film do well? It gets right into the action without the need for a block exposition, setting up the rules of the vampire world through short clips and newspaper headlines. The mechanics of the corporate vampire ruling class is also surprisingly well thought out, the vamps living in pristine modernist houses and apartments equipped to block out the sun. Ethan Hawke gives an ok performance as the world-weary vampire Dalton, but the fun was had by William Defoe as the former petrol-head vampire Elvis, and Sam Neil as the slick, controlling corporate villain Bromley. The whole premise of vampires being afraid of the “extra-vampire” ferals is also a neat twist on a tired trope.
So where does this film go off the rails? The ending! It’s like a kid who is so eager to bring a plate of food to the table that they trip over their own feet and your dinner ends up painted over the roof. What we have as a sequence of events is: Dalton cures his vampirism, goes to Bromley and gets bitten. Bromley becomes human and is killed by his own soldiers. Dalton is saved by his brother, who has also been turned human, who in getting eaten by another group of soldiers, turns them human. Dalton’s lab partner kills the cured soldiers, and Elvis kills the lab partner. End Credits.
Notice how almost none of this links to the setup I gave above?
It has almost nothing to do with the blood substitute, the soldiers are a little feral but the “uber-vampires” are absent, and the cured vampires are all killed so there wasn’t any point with the cured blood bait-and-switch to begin with. You may be wondering who Dalton’s brother is. Don’t bother – you could literally remove him from the plot, along with Bromley’s human daughter, and it doesn’t really affect anything.
It’s a disappointing end to a movie that had a great start, but apart from plot mechanics, the same complaint holds true for character development. Dalton grimaces and mopes his way through the plot, but there’s very little insight as to why he hates being a vampire so much, and what kind of emotional challenge has been resolved by becoming human again. The impression I get is just that he hates working for a faceless corporation. So do a lot of people mate, but they don’t necessarily turn their office into Custer’s Last Stand.
That’s it for this week, I have a few more trainwrecks that I’m going to work my way through, but until then have a great week and leave a comment below!
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