Review: Daybreakers
It’s refreshing to watch a vampire film where the vampires don’t sparkle. It’s even more refreshing to watch a vampire film that has a completely unique and bold idea.
Daybreakers is the kind of film that takes vampires and gives them very human-like characteristics. They retain their human survival instincts whilst having that thirst for blood – the way that directors Michael & Paul Spierig create a world where vampires live like humans is very interesting.
It’s 2019 and vampires are now the dominant species whilst humans have been reduced to being endangered – the humans are effectively blood banks on legs. A vampire business that farms and distributes blood to the masses finds that the number of humans and therefore the amount of blood left is decreasing rapidly. It will only be a matter of time before the supply runs out – when vampires don’t get the human blood they need to sustain themselves they become deformed bat-like vampires known as “sub-siders”.
The vampire blood business executive assigns scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) and his team of hematologists to find a substitute for human blood that will help maintain the vampire race. However, when he bumps into human Audrey (Claudia Karvan) and her group of covert humans she leads him to what could be the answer Edward is looking for.
The plot to Daybreakers is perhaps too convenient when it plays out as if the scriptwriters had the idea of creating a vampire world living like humans but didn’t know how to make a film out of it. Plot events are too scripted and predictable at times, whilst the narrative structure has all the makings for a brilliantly individual take on vampires but ends up being a bumpy mess that rarely finds solid ground.
Try to get over the fact that Ethan Hawke's vampire character shares the same name as the main male vampire in Twilight.
That being said the acting helps ease the story along with Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe in particular providing acting performances that are perfectly acceptable. A few performances seem stale but in general the acting isn’t something that deteriorates from where the film shines the most.
The film is more than watchable for two main reasons and not much else: the concept and the visual effects. Daybreakers is very visually strong with many moments in the film being enjoyable purely because of the visual design. The way the vampires look is excellent in fitting with the world they are in and the CGI visuals add weight to the realism of the world around them.
The visual quality helps encapsulate what makes the film so watchable – you’re not watching your run-of-the-mill vampire flick where the bloodsuckers live in a castle in a European country and only drink the blood of young women. There’s a large sense of everyday life within Daybreakers with how the vampire economy is depicted and how the world in which they live in is very much run as if it were a human society.
This alone would be interesting to observe but would lack a certain flair – the well-implemented visual additions and set-pieces enhanced with tuned visuals supports the film’s unique characteristic whilst making the whole affair engaging and rewarding enough to keep you watching from start to finish.
Overall Impressions:
If you watch Daybreakers expecting to be entertained you will be to a certain extent but don’t be too optimistic when approaching this film. Daybreakers has some serious issues in regards to the narrative and at some points it’s purely the element of intrigue and visual quality that will keep you watching.
Rating: 
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