Sorry, vampire fans. There are still two more entries in the lame “Twilight” series on the way. Thankfully, for every one of those ridiculous teen angst-driven stories, there seems to be a very cool “30 Days of Night” or a darkly funny “Thirst” to placate and even excite those of us who don’t give a damn about sullen bloodsuckers.
“Daybreakers, “the newest anti-“Twilight” film to hit the screens, comes from brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who gave us the excellent but little-seen zombie tale “Undead” a few years back.
This time they’re setting their story a decade into the future, where men and women live a “normal” life – getting a good day’s sleep, waking each night and wiping that sleep from their yellow eyes, brushing their fangs and dressing nicely to go to their jobs. They likely can’t tell if their hair is neat because they have no reflections. And, oh, yeah, they’re all immortal.
Well, they’re immortal if they can get enough human blood. Ten years earlier, you see, there was an outbreak of a disease that was traced to a kind of rabid bat. That snowballed into an epidemic that turned most of the world into vampires. At the film’s start, less than 5 percent of the human population remains, so there’s a blood shortage, and if the vampires don’t get enough of that red juice, they ... well, let’s just say they begin to change, and they don’t make very good company for humans or vampires.
Laced with dark humor, bitten necks, flying body parts, and some wild action sequences, the Spierigs’ sometimes brooding and sometimes effects-crazy tale comes directly out of the old school of vampire stories, but it has a welcome abundance of twists and turns that make it fresh.
Ethan Hawke plays Edward, a depressed vampire who’s also chief hematologist at a company that runs a human harvesting facility. It’s a place that catches then pumps humans dry, but also tries to create a blood substitute. Vampire CEO from hell Charles Bromley runs the company with his yellow eyes focused only on consumerism of two kinds: drinking and moneymaking. Played by Sam Neill, who knows how to channel attitudes that are both dour and evil, Bromley is one great, vicious bad guy.
But meet the humans, among them Audrey (Claudia Karvan) and Elvis (Willem Dafoe), who are hiding from the vampires, and trying to find a cure for vampirism in order to save the human race.
