Show Me Your Teeth

Daybreakers

Directed By: Michael & Peter Spierig

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, & Sam Neill

Vampires are definitely in style right now, what with True Blood mesmerizing television audiences and The Twilight Saga burning up the box-office. It is no surprise then that some filmmakers would swoop in to take advantage of such success, each hoping to snatch a little piece of the prize. And thus we arrive at Daybreakers, a movie written and directed by the Spierig brothers. Let me start off by saying that these two definitely know how to direct a stylish movie. Daybreakers simply looks phenomenal, with sleek production styles and halfway-decent special effects. Unfortunately, my compliments will, for the most part, end there. Other than that, Daybreakers is fairly awful. You can tell right from the get-go that this movie is only about vampires because, right now, vampires are profitable. Its basic plot, which features a world so overrun by vampires that human blood has become scarce, seems creative at first, until you realize that it is really a one-trick pony, developed as a flimsy facade to make audiences think they will actually be seeing a full-fledged story. Instead, they will actually be sitting through a concept that never fully takes off...though, I must admit, it's a pretty neat concept for the opening act.

So, the world is overrun by vampires and human blood is running out. If a vampire is deprived of blood for too long, we learn, they become these horrible, snarling mutants. That is why Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) has been asked to develop a synthetic blood alternative that can be mass-produced (yes, True Blood fans, just like Tru Blood). His employer is the villainous Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) whose company also harvests humans for their blood; Edward hopes that his invention will stop the need for humans and, thus, allow them to repopulate. However, right now, any humans caught are arrested and taken away for either harvesting or, I would assume, vampiric conversion. Edward joins forces with a clan of humans, led by Elvis (Willem Dafoe), a gun-toting man with a thick southern drawl. They believe they have found something better than a blood alternative: a cure for the vampires. Once all of this is explained and established (through relatively uninspired and uninteresting scenes), the rest of the movie is just a mad-dash to the finale that rarely keeps its audience interested. It takes a lot of miscalculating to create a movie with this much action, all surprisingly well-shot, and then have very little of it be entertaining or the slightest bit fun.

A big problem with Daybreakers is the cast. I know what you're thinking: this movie has Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Neill. How can its problem be the cast? Basically, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill tackle their respective characters with all the subtlety of a Looney Tunes character, and Ethan Hawke plays his with the gusto of a rocking chair. These are the kind of performances that occur when a cast is there simply because they need a paycheck. You can tell that none of them are particularly invested in their characters and, though they do seem to get more involved as the movie progresses, they all start off at such an unexpectedly bad level, they don't ever completely rectify the problem. I'm always a little surprised to see good actors give bad performances, even though it is common in movies as half-assed as this. It is hard to blame them entirely because, let's face it, even celebrities need income, and Daybreakers is not the kind of movie that requires a huge amount of effort. I imagine, it was an easy job. Unfortunately, it seems that this cast didn't give any effort to their performances; I was constantly alternating between drifting off to sleep when Ethan Hawke was onscreen and giggling at the over-dramatic showings of Dafoe and Neill.

I think that there might be a good movie buried somewhere in all of the crap that is Daybreakers. The script shows hints of an environmental message that, though used as a basis for many movies, could have helped bring some life into this robotic movie. The movie is essentially going through the motions, making us feel as though we are simply watching an assembly line work. There is no emotion in it...no heart...no spark that truly brings it to life. I found myself so emotionally-disconnected from everything on-screen that, at about the thirty-minute mark, I was praying for it to end swiftly. Unfortunately, I had another hour to go, and all of the blood, guts, and gore in the world couldn't have saved it from becoming painstakingly tedious. But, boy, did the Spierig brothers try: this movie gets really messy quite quickly, with one vampire literally exploding all over the place (in one of the movie's few really great scenes) and more having their heads ripped sloppily from their bodies. I was actually impressed with the sheer creativity of some of these gory scenes and that might be enough to win over some horror fans...but not this one. The gore should supplement the story and, unfortunately, Daybreakers doesn't have a story. It has an idea...a good idea, to be sure, but no substance to take that idea anywhere. Suck on that, vamps!