Daybreakers

[meteordust]

I watched this movie just a week ago, and I am kind of enamoured with it? I love vampire stories, but I did not expect it to take up residence in my head like this.

I'm late to the party, so we've already blown past the science fiction future of this movie. Made in 2009, and set in 2019, after a worldwide plague (!!) has transformed the majority of the population into vampires. Humans are on the brink of extinction, either farmed for blood or hunted as fugitives. And if humans die out, that's bad news for everyone. Vampirism is always symbolic of something. Here, according to one reviewer, it's a metaphor for late stage capitalism and rampant resource consumption.

Edward (played by Ethan Hawke) is a vampire haematologist, desperately researching a blood substitute, when he runs across a human resistance group with an answer that could change everything. Edward is one of my favourite character types: beautifully angsty, but with an edge. He didn't want to become a vampire! He's working to change things even while he's working for The Man! In the course of the movie, he gets whumped a lot. He suffers very prettily, but he also has a steely core of resolve.

It's also entertaining to see Sam Neill play a bad guy (the ruthless vampire CEO) and Willem Dafoe play a good guy (one of the human resistance leaders). And it's always great to see Claudia Karvan being excellent (as another human resistance leader). Turns out this was filmed in Australia, as an Australian and United States co-production, and a lot of Australian and New Zealand actors show up in it.

The running time is a sleek 94 minutes: tightly scripted, beautifully paced, not a beat wasted. More movies need to learn this. The aesthetic is gorgeous, lots of blue light for the cold vampire world and gold light for the warm human world. I love the blend of futuristic technology and classic noir.

Some of the scenes, though, are very bloody and gory. I usually have a low tolerance for this, but they're so cartoonish it wasn't that disturbing to me? And they're pretty well telegraphed, like, "Hmmmm, I'm getting a bad feeling about where this is going... Oh no. Oh dear."

The science is kind of implausible, and some of the action is kind of ridiculous. But I'm not here for your earth logic, I'm here for rule of cool and all the feelings.

If you would like to experience this movie in three minutes, I recommend checking out mithborien's excellent vid. (Note: Contains spoilers and gore.)

VID: Me & Lazarus (40 words) by mithborien
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Daybreakers (2009)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Fanvids
Summary: Movie recap (most uninspired summary ever)

Comments

[thawrecka]

It is a delightful movie! So stylish, and it commits fully to its supernatural logic.

[meteordust]

It really was so stylish and so committed! It wasn't afraid to go big, and I loved it.

[dolorosa_12]

I love this film, and I'm always delighted when others have watched it, as it's fairly niche. The fact that it was shot in Australia and has a number of Australian and NZ actors in the cast is great, too. As a climate change metaphor, it's about as subtle as an anvil, but I'll watch pretty much anything about vampires so I don't mind too much. (As always, however, with this kind of vampire mythology — namely that being bitten by a vampire turns you into a vampire and thus decreases the vampires' food supply — I'm always frustrated that the vampires aren't smarter, and that at least some of them don't realise it would be prudent to make an alliance with humans and pay them to be blood donors. Then again, that would of course spoil the premise of the film.)

Thanks for the vid rec, I don't think I've seen it before!

[meteordust]

I'm really happy to find other people who loved it too! I wasn't sure how well known or well regarded it was, since I hadn't heard much about it before. It was such a wonderful surprise. Yeah, this kind of vampire mythology is kind of like a pyramid scheme - it relies on having an endless supply of new people, otherwise it collapses in on itself. Though it's possible a lot of people have just decided they want to become immortal, and assume the resources will come from somewhere? Which fits with the climate change metaphor too.

[dolorosa_12]

Vampirism as a pyramid scheme is perfect!

[lokifan]

*makes note*

[meteordust]

I hope you like it if you check it out!