With all that in mind, the movie DAYBREAKERS represented a very promising film. Apparently not that promising, though, as the movie waited about two years for a release date.
The premise of the film is a world where almost everyone is a vampire, which means their supply of human blood is running out. A small cabal of vampires are trying to find a blood substitute so they can sustain their lifestyle, but things aren't looking good.
Ethan Hawke plays a reluctant vampire who is trying to find a blood substitute. He is motivated by his revulsion surrounding what he's become. Become of his altruistic motives Hawke gets to play his role with an annoying bravado that primarily revolves around sullen looks and droopy eyes.
Hawke's enemy is Sam Neil, his boss early in the movie. Sam loves being a vampire. Not much more to say about him than that, except maybe the fact he's supposed to represent faceless corporations that are ruining American society. I'm sure there's some sort of metaphor like that in the movie, but it went either way over (or way under more likely) my head.
Oh yeah, but back to the plot, which introduces the revelation that the vampire condition can be reversed. We learn this fact through Willem Dafoe, whose character, Elvis, became human again after brief exposure to the sunlight. With this knowledge in hand, Hawke wants to recreate the experiment and hopefully offer a cure for vampires.
We're left with a bit of a cliffhanger surrounding the future of the vampires, although there is some suggestion that things will work out and they'll return to their humanity.
The only good thing from this movie is Dafoe, who embraces the manic gravitas that the late Dennis Hopper cultivated so well in the second half of his career.
This is particularly relevant considering Dafoe succeeding Hopper as the villain in the SPEED series. Dafoe says weird catch phrases, yells and basically looks like he's still a vampire for most of his performance. I loved it.Hated everything else about this movie. Brother against brother element, awful. Evil corporation, boring. Downfall of humanity, eh. Action, so boring! Intrigue, sorry, i fell asleep.
Finally, I just want to point out some failed foreshadowing in the movie. They let us know early on that there is a walkway the vampires can use during the daytime. Why didn't Hawke and company utilize this by exposing light down their for a brief time once they found out that this was the cure for vampires? Set up some mirrors and let the sun in for a few seconds, and boom, problem solved. Instead they choose a much less logical route that is as fulfilling as the piss poor blood substitute.
If you want to watch good vampire stuff you should devour TRUE BLOOD. If you need good end of humanity stuff, how about THE MATRIX? As for the Apocalypse, MAD MAX.
I wanted to like this movie, and in hindsight, it might be so bad it is good. Unfortunately i'm still too close to the train wreck to have that kind of perspective.
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