Daybreakers: Surprisingly Awesome!
January is traditionally the cinematic dumpster, a time when studios are tossing out the films even they think are garbage. But it’s always been a good time for fans of genre film, who can inevitably find a few treasures in the junk pile. So I’m pleased to report that Daybreakers – yes, the Ethan Hawke vampire movie – officially earns a happy dance from me.
Daybreakers actually looks less like horror and more like very stylized sci-fi (the presence of Hawke makes it feel all the more like Gattaca) until the first of many buckets of gore are unleashed on the audience (frankly, I haven’t seen this much head exploding since Scanners) at which point you know that you’re in for some serious horror action. But the premise is smart enough: it’s 2019 and vampires run the show, but they’re about to run out of human blood. Our Hawke hero is a reluctant vampire scientist searching for a blood substitute, who also has a trigger (fang?) happy brother in the vampire army. Enter Willem Dafoe, a redneck former vampire who goes by the name Elvis, and a group of hunted humans, led by the very compelling Claudia Karvan. Rounding out everything is a perfectly cast Sam Neill as a (literal) corporate bloodsucker. There’s a bit of social commentary here – Hawke works for the equivalent of big pharma – but it’s never particularly heavy-handed. Instead, the film is a pretty solid blend of brains, blood and actors who do a good job of selling the script, which gets pretty thin at times. Add to that a solid dose of muscle cars, a lot of cheeky visuals, chimpanzee vampires (chimpires!) the most ludiciously fantastic bloodfeasting sequence – we’re talking SLOW MOTION BLOODFEASTING here, people – and a couple of very good jolts and you’ve got yourself quite a January horror gem. It’s good!
One other item of note about Daybreakers: being a vampire is seriously uncool in this film. These vampires are bad. What a refreshing return to form for a supernatural creature that seems confined to handwringing and canoodling with humans in pop culture these days. Hooray for the return of the bloodsucker!
