Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Daybreakers (2009)

This was a cool movie.  I actually wasn't expecting very much going into this, because I figured it was just another movie riding the coattails of the recent vampire obsession everyone seems to have. 

It's the year 2019 and the majority of the world's population are vampires.  However, there is a major blood shortage due to the lack of humans available for eating.  Many humans are being farmed for blood at a pharmacuetical company, and the humans on the run are being constantly hunted by the vampire army.

Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is the chief hematologist at Bromley Marks pharmacueticals.  The company farms humans for blood, but is also on the search for a blood alternative.  The company also studies the effects of the lack of human blood on vampires.  Apparently if they don't get human blood, they shrivel up and look weird and turn into human/bat mutants (see picture above)  Due to the worldwide blood shortage, these mutants are everywhere, and are feeding on other vampires.

So in these times of desperation, humans are being hunted ruthlessly and there are blood riots in the streets.  So where does Edward fit in?  He's a vampire who doesn't really want to be one.  But his brother is a vampire hunter.  Major drama.  Edward feels bad for humans and wants to help them.  So he comes across a secret group of humans led by Audrey (Claudia Carvan) and Elvis (William Dafoe) and they form an alliance of sorts.  Edward joins the group of renegade humans on a quest to find a cure/solution for the blood shortage.

This movie had a lot of plot holes and lack of continuity, but it was action-packed and exciting.  The world run by vampires was pretty realistic, and I enjoyed the attention to detail like the vampire cars, subwalk, etc.  I recommend checking it out without taking it too seriously. (IMDB message board commentators would probably disagree with me on that)

photo source

1 comments:

Sara said...

Thanks for the recommendation - definitely a good watch!