Review by Mike Martin
Stars Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan, Sam Neill,
Isabel Lucas, Jay Laga'aia, Damien Garvey | Written by Michael & Peter Spierig
UK certification 18 | UK RRP £24.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 98 minutes | Directed by Michael & Peter Spierig
Vampire films never seem to really go out of fashion. They have all the right ingredients – a sexually predatory male on the hunt for virgin blood, symbols of penetrations and darkness, and lots of gothic imagery. This reprise on the theme has a new angle, all the usual clichés – people going invisible in mirrors, lots of blood and gore, but a new twist. It’s absolutely made for a Saturday night in with a pizza and of course a bottle of red wine, dribbled down the side of the mouth.
Set in a nightmarish future after an "outbreak", which has left the world populated by yellow-eyed vampires, desperate for human blood, the twist is that humans have been almost wiped out, leaving the populace desperate for a blood substitute. Doctor Dalton (Hawke) is working for a huge corporation researching to find a liquid which will solve the crisis, but which also hoards real humans in a giant lab to earn profits. Dalton has sympathy for the humans, but his fake blood has unfortunate side-effects to say the least, in the film’s gory homage to Scanners.
Dalton’s attemts to find a substitute leads him to a gang of renegade humans, including "Elvis" (Dafoe) and Audrey (Lucas). He tries to find a "cure" for the disease, but the massive corporation he works for is not so keen, and the MD, a gloriously seedy Sam Neill, will do anything to get Dalton back.
Daybreakers takes all of the vampire clichés but still manages to provide lots of shocks, scares and buckets of blood. The only real complaint is the metaphor itself becomes so mixed it’s almost impossible to follow. The blood shortage is some sort of commentary about the world’s oil crisis, AIDS, racism, even the ailing wine industry. Neill’s glorious seediness is matched by a sympathetic portrayal by Hawke. This is Grand Guignol with a huge body count and some genuinely shocking moments. This tale has teeth alright.
EXTRAS ★★★ An audio commentary with writer/directors the Spierig brothersm and special make-up effects supervisor Steve Boyle; a making-of featurette; picture-in-picture storyboards and animatics; a poster art gallery; the theatrical trailer; and a short film by the Spierigs, The Big Picture.