Daybreakers: Vamp's That Go Boom! by Birdiebo

As I love all things of the creepy crawly nature, i.e. horror and suspense films, tonight I went to the opening of the latest installment in vampire films, “Daybreakers”. This is the Spierig brothers first film that’s received a good bit of attention. From what I've discovered they’ve really only written and directed a couple of films, the last being “Undead” in 2003. These projects they have directed indicate that the Spierig brothers are on the right track to dishing out some decent gore filled flicks.

“Daybreakers” takes place in 2019 where nearly every human as been turned into a vampire. Yeah, everyone gets to live forever!!!! Seems ideal right? Unfortunately, this creates a whole new set of problems. Not only are the vamps running out of blood to feed on due to the dwindling loss of humans, but now vampires are mutating into some truly bufugly monsters when they don’t get enough blood.

Ethan Hawke’s character Edward Dalton works for a company, run by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), that is trying to find a suitable blood substitute for the population. Edward Dalton is wanting something a little more like a cure though, and here is where the conflict comes in. It’s hard to convince nearly an entire population to basically give up immortality.

Edward…wait…why… why do you have to give him the name Edward??? Another vampire named Edward. (rolls eyes) This name is starting to give me problems that can't be fixed with just an asprin...eye twitches...*clears throat*...I just needed to get that out of my system…thankfully they eventually started calling him Ed.

Okay…Ed eventually teams up with some humans that claim to have found the cure for vampires. Within that crew is Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Willem Dafoe) who plays a badass vamp fighter with a love for all things cars. It is a little odd how men can get attached to cars, over compensating much? Basically the plot of the film is trying to refine the cure for the "vampire disease".

Overall, I enjoyed watching “Daybreakers”. In a time where vampire movies have been mostly linked with the “Twilight Saga”, it’s nice to get something for the grownups to watch. Of course it’s hard to go through a whole vampire movie without having some truly cheesy moments, and “Daybreakers” did not disappoint in that since. It did balance itself out with the amount of unadulterated gore. Not only did it have one of the most gruesome death scenes I’ve ever witnessed, but it also had enough vampire combustion to make up for the cheese-factor.

The vampires burst into flames when the sunlight hit them like most good vampire stories, which is what I want to see a vampire do when they are faced with UV rays….not sparkle. They also did a nice little exploding act when they where killed by having something driven threw their heart.

Some might say that “Daybreakers” is a little formulaic; little guy goes up against a big corporation…but come on…this one is with a world full of vampires!!! And I’m the first say that I’m not asking for much in the way of vampire movies. There have been some terrible vampire films made and its sad to know that the bad outweigh the good for this genre. A little goes a long way with me on vamp flicks.

To sum it up, this movie can be simplified into it’s fun, gory, and NOT TWILIGHT. Also, if you’re like me it never hurts to watch Ethan Hawke for two hours!