“Life’s a bitch, and then you don’t die.”
What’s frustrating about watching an extremely satisfying B-level horror film like “Daybreakers” is that you wonder why every movie can’t have as simple and effective a story. Here you have this little grinder dumped in theatres during the dog days of January starring a few respected names (Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill) but no big stars, and yet it manages to tell its story with more lean, mean and steam than monster hits like “Transformers 2” (which sucked) and “Sherlock Holmes” (which didn’t). When did watching a simple, easy to follow, well-paced story unfold on the big screen become the exception?
“Simple” doesn’t mean dumb, either — or clichéd. It means simple; it means you’re able to repeat the story to someone else in under a minute. Go ahead and try to tell someone the story of “Sherlock Holmes.” You can’t. It’s too convoluted. The director couldn’t tell you the story. The best he could do is try and explain it. Anyone who’s done any serious amount of screenwriting will tell you that nothing’s harder than simplicity, and yet for all the many millions our top screenwriters make, somewhere along the line…
What I meant say was, “Daybreakers” is my kind of movie, and not just because there’s all kinds of senseless violence and vampires — though one or the other is usually enough.
In their second feature film, the writer/director team made up of the brothers Spierig have brought to vivid cinematic life an intriguing world packed with fascinating detail set ten years in the future where vampires have taken over and we mere mortals (those who clung to their humanity and refused to transform) are hunted down and housed in Matrix-like human blood farms to feed the children of the night. There’s just one problem: Too many vampires, not enough humans. The blood supply is quickly running out.
Blood is the currency of this transformed realm and those who can afford it live the life of the elite and those who can’t panhandle until starvation eventually turns them into a sickly, grotesque bat-like monster prior to their demise. This society runs just fine when it’s the lower classes starving to death, but within the next thirty days the middle class will feel hunger pangs and then everything breaks down.
Our hero is Edward (Hawke), a top-tier hematologist and reluctant vampire morally opposed to the exploitation of humans, even though he works for the world’s single central blood farm and its profit-hungry chairman Charles Bromley (Neill). With the food supply running out, Edward and Bromley have a shared interest in creating a blood substitute that won’t make someone’s head explode (don’t ask). Unfortunately for Edward, the elite will always prefer the real thing and deep down he knows his substitute might satisfy the workaday vamps, but the foo-foo will always have their human farms.
What’s needed is a cure for vampirism itself and this might be found in a band of rebels led by Elvis (Dafoe), a Southern boy who oozes masculine flamboyance and drives a tricked out Mustang, and the beautiful but tough Audrey (remember: a rebel group without a tough babe who looks great in a halter top is not a rebel group), played by Claudia Karvan.
As with all good horror films there’s plenty of social statement in the subtext but unlike the morally illiterate James Cameron, the Spierig Brothers paint in the kind of generalities that leave the interpretation up to you. What I personally saw was Leftist Hollywood’s vision for the world come true: Everything’s centralized and the most selfish people on the planet have forsaken their souls to realize their dream of staying forever young as they feed off others while the rest of us starve, until… A Southern redneck who drives a gas-guzzler and carries unregistered weapons comes along with a can of whup-ass.
But that’s just me.
“Daybreakers” is rated R and proud of it. Violence, action, gore, no shaky-cam, and one hellaciously awesome car chase that makes buying the DVD mandatory. Yes, the story is simple, but also smart. The details of this world are complex and fascinating, the pacing superb, the wrap-up satisfying, and there’s even a little humor.
Is it a perfect genre flick? Not quite. No nudity.
