Daybreakers (The Spierig Brothers) 2009

There are a few different ways the creation of vampires is handled.  The first is the more traditional of siring where the vampire has to make a decision to make another a vampire.  The other more recent one is the concept that vampirism is a disease spread by just a bite (From Dusk Till Dawn or Vampires for example).  I always had a quibble with those vampires simply because that causes the problem of an exponential growth vampires.  Within a few months, the whole world would consist of vampires.  I have to give credit to the Spierig brothers with rolling with that concept and going all the way.

This is a world where the majority of the planet are vampires and they harvest humans for blood.  The problem is their supplies are dwindling.  The problem when vampires don’t feed is they degenerate into monstrous man bats with purely animal instincts.  Ethan Hawke  plays Edward, a person who was turned by force and is working for the world’s biggest blood supplier.  He is trying to come up with a blood substitute as a solution to the whole killing people thing.  Humans (led by Willem Dafoe) come to Edward since he’s sympathetic to the humans and try to get Edward to help them.  Apparently, Willem was a vampire but was cured for an unknown reason.  Edward tries to figure out why he was cured.

I have to give the directors credit in that they made this movie for only about $20 million.  In some areas you can see where they cut corners with the budget, but they made a fully fleshed out world with great special effects on a relatively shoestring budget.  They handle everything from the practical vamp effects to the man bats and it all works.

I wasn’t really expecting much with this movie but I was won over by it.  I can only say that I was drawn into this world.  The characters all interact well and the story is well written.  At no point did I really throw the bullshit flag.  The action scenes are well done and the scenes with the bat creatures are really cool.

The acting is all around good.  I really don’t know why Ethan Hawke gets shit upon by critics.  He’s no Phillip Seymore Hoffman, but he gives consistently good performances in everything he is in.  Believe me, you can do a hell of a lot worse than Ethan Hawke people.  Dafoe and Sam Neill both have limited roles but they play them as well as you expect.

There were a few times I was worried the movie would resort to bullshit jump scares and some other bad horror cliches but thankfully they stay away from it for the most part.  Overall I thought this was a very good movie.  Maybe I’m being a little generous, but in the current world of uninspired sparkly vampire movies, I appreciate any attempt at being original.  But yeah I really liked this movie.