Daybreakers (2009)

Director: Peter Spierig

Cast: Harriet Minto-Day as Lisa Barrett, Jay Laga'aia as Senator Turner, Damien Garvey as Senator Westlake, Sahaj Dumpleton as Homeless Vampire, Allan Todd as Businessman, Gabriella Di Labio as Businesswoman, Ben Siemer as Police Officer, Peter Welman as Police Officer, Ethan Hawke as Edward Dalton, Callum McLean as Vampire School Kid, Jarrad Pon as Vampire School Kid, Victoria Williams as Vampire School Kid, Zoe White as Vampire School Kid, Aolani Roy as Vampire School Kid, Tiffany Lamb as News Reader

Building on the genre-clash crossover theme that was solidly
established the first night of TIFF's Midnight Madness with the slasher
flick cum teen girl comedy Jennifer's Body, programmer Colin Geddes has
delivered another interesting hybrid: the futuristic, sci-fi-vampire
film Daybreakers.

Set 10 years into the future and after the bat-spawned vampire plague
converted the vast majority of humans into blood-sucking chain-smoking
nocturnal regular joes who have to shave by watching themselves in a
video feed, Daybreakers is directed by the twin Spierig brothers.
They're MM vets, these dudes, as their last film (2003's Undead)
famously closed out the beloved Uptown theatre here in Toronto, the
still-mourned theatre that was home to the midnight TIFF screenings
before they moved to the cavernous, impersonal and enormous Ryerson
hall.

Ethan Hawke plays vampire Edward, the reticent, kind-hearted Chief
Hematologist of the giant multi-national corporation tasked with
farming the remaining few humans for their blood and developing a
substitute to feed the billions of vampires teetering on the edge of
starvation as resources dwindle. The film is a neat enough allegory any
number of take-your-pick conservation issues, food, water, oil; one of
the things that makes the film work is that it's sci-fi of the best
kind, true speculative fiction that talks about what's happening now,
or could happen soon, through a lens that both abstracts it slightly
and makes it easier (if at times much too much and too obvious) to see.
The Spierig bros' film is entertaining from the start, it takes an
immediate heart-warming leap into territory any genre film-lover will
like. The film says "ok, this is a vampire movie, it's in the future,
the humans lost, the vampires have their own society now" and instead
of just telling that story, the story of the battle, Daybreakers takes
that as pat and asks "ok, now that you've accepted that in the
prologue, what happens to vampire society when it runs out of blood?".

It's joyous just in its premise, so reminiscent and redolent of true
movie-monster-nerd basement fantasy conversations about who would win
between Dracula and Predator or what would happen if the Nazis had
werewolf soldiers that any number of technical shortcomings, like a
jumbled, poorly paced and overlong second act or a handful of
not-very-good performances can be overlooked easily and gladly. While
much of the film feels (and not just due to the presence of Ethan
Hawke, who oddly spends the last half an hour of the film looking
exactly like Han Solo) like vampire Gattaca as the machinations of the
rebel - underground - vs - evil - corporate - overlords - and - there's
- also - a - family - betrayal - subplot revolve, there are a handful
of truly scary, truly sublime scenes of the best kind of vampire
carnage, gory and stylish and terrifying. For lovers like me of genre
freakouts, Daybreakers offers a flawed but thoroughly enjoyable,
happy-making trip, one foot firmly in vampire flick tradition and the
other in entertaining, creative and original speculative territory. I
was sold the moment I didn't see Ethan Hawke's reflection in the rear
view mirror of a sleek, futured-up Chevy cruising through the best
Blade Runner future two Australian indie filmmaker brothers could
create. 8.1/10.

We have a video version on our site, http://www.thesubstream.com .