In the year 2019, a plague has transformed almost every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind.
The Spierig Brothers’ 2009 “Daybreakers” offers an interesting perspective for a vampire movie. Typically, it is the bloodsucking fiends who have to hide in the shadows from the humans but here, the roles are reversed. After a plague from an infected vampire bat turns most of the people on earth into vampires, the remaining humans must hide during the night and travel during the day. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is a hematologist who works for Bromley Pharmaceuticals, which is owned by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) and who are trying to manufacture a blood substitute as the blood from the humans who have been captured and harvested in laboratories, is running low. Edward feels sympathy for humans and only drinks animal blood as he was turned by his brother at the beginning of the outbreak without being given the option.
On his way home one night, he has an accident with a minivan carrying a small band of humans. Instead of turning them over to the police, he hides them and then helps them to escape. The leader of the group, Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan), glances at Edward’s ID badge and sees his occupation and the company he works for. They disappear into the night and sometime later, she reappears at Edward’s house, where he lives with his younger brother Frankie (Michael Dorman) and informs him that a man she works with, Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Willem Dafoe), has a cure for vampirism. She gives him a time and location of a meeting place and the next day he drives there to meet him. Before he has the chance to tell Edward how he transformed back into a human after being a vampire, they are fired upon by a military team led by Edward’s brother Frankie. After a brief scuffle, Frankie is left unconscious as Elvis, Edward and Audrey escape to a vineyard that her family used to own and a location she uses to hide other humans fleeing persecution and capture from the vampires.
Elvis tells Edward he reverted to human form after having been ejected from his sun-proof car in a crash which subjected him to direct sunlight, forcing him to burst into flames but having been in the rays of the sun for a precise length of time, he was saved when he landed in a river. Edward agrees to help him try to recreate the cure for the masses but in order to make it work, they must break into Bromley Pharmaceuticals but when they are captured, Edward tries to tell Charles that they have a cure but he is more interested in continuing to hunt down every last human, stating that people will be willing to pay any amount of money for the real deal. Charles then bites Edward but doesn’t realize that he has become human and subsequently, becomes human himself. With his armed and very hungry guards on their way, Edward ties him up and leaves him to his demise.
“Daybreakers” opened to mixed reviews, although they leaned more towards positive and deservedly so. Released in 2009, it got lost in the shadow of “Twilight” and its subsequent sequels but it is a far more superior picture to all the Twilight films combined. Here, vampires are lethal and show absolutely no mercy towards humans, with the rare exception of Edward and some like-minded colleagues. The Spierig Brothers give “Daybreakers” a unique visual aesthetic, its night scenes present a stylish, polished appearance while the day shots are bleak and ominous, a complete reversal of what most other vampire movies typically present. The cast is uniformly outstanding with Sam Neill chewing up the scenery with his vampiric incisors and getting a well-deserved death that will undoubtedly stay with you long after the final credits roll. The ending was left wide open for a possible sequel but to date, nothing has come to light (pun intended). Maybe they’ll set their sights on a follow-up that we can sink our teeth into.
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