The Enchanted Quill - Daybreakers

Daybreakers

Good concept, alright execution. Basically it's about the future where almost all humans have been turned into vampires, and have totally forgotten about that little thing called "foresight" and are running out of tasty, nutritious humans to eat. If they don't eat human blood, they will turn into scary CG monsters, so this is really a bit of a problem. Ethan Hawke plays a hematologist who basically is unhappy at the whole vampire situation, and is searching for a synthetic blood substitute when he's approached by some humans about the possibility of a cure.

I didn't mind this movie. It wasn't out and out terrible, though it does have some absurdly over-the-top moments. There's some insane telegraphy of plot (when a character mentions his daughter all causally in a conversation, you just know that some how, she's going to show up. Of course she does.) It's not a case of amazingly original filmmaking, but I didn't think it was by any means bad. Well, OK, I could have done with about 90% fewer instances of bats shrieking by in a flash and an ear-piercing noise that in the modern theatre can probably cause permanent hearing damage. The sound designer is clearly a dick.

Still, this movie has Ethan Hawke (yum!) and Sam Neill (yay!) and Willem Defoe (...yippee?), and even if Neill is camping it up a little sometimes, these are still three solid performers. The woman is good too, even if she's left with little more than being a strong woman who still manages to be in quite a bit of distress most of the time. The opening scene is fun and a nice set up for the rest of the movie - it's just too bad that the movie seems to oscillate between Crazy-action-thrill-ride and Serious-thoughtful-concept-movie, which was a line that Children of Men was able to straddle successfully, but few other movies that I can think of. Daybreakers isn't nearly as successful at being both thoughtful and action-packed, as a result, it's semi-thoughful, and action-having.

Not great, not awful, fairly entertaining. I'd say if you are interested in seeing a bit of a different take on the vampire movie (ie, less teen angst, romance, and glitter) you'll probably enjoy it. I did. Though seriously? I know it was made in Australia and all, but stop ripping off the Matrix! The human "farm" operation looked kind of cool, i guess, but if you stop and think about it for a second, and try to accept that 95% of people on the planet are vampires, and they need to drink human blood, seriously, they're going to strap unconscious humans into some kind of weird vertical blood draining pods? Wouldn't it make more sense to raise them, like sheep, and feed them, like sheep, and harvest a pint or so from them every week or something? You know, sustainable farming? Because there seems to be the implication that people are roughly the same after they are turned, so did not a single person think that "hey, maybe there's a better way of controlling our food supply?". Or maybe everyone just turned into a vapid moron when they became vampires and were all like "yay, immortal now! let's forget everything!". Sorry, that was just the one thing that did really bug me in this movie, the utter lack of logic in the face of ripping off scenes that were once visually disturbing and pretty cool, but have already been overused to death.