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Daybreakers (Film)
Rating: MA
Running Time: 98
Country: Australia/USA
Director: Peter Spierig, Michael Spierig
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, Claudia Karvan, Isabel Lucas, Sam Neill
Release Date: February 04, 2010
Film Worth: $12.50
FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worthA bad ending doesn’t detract too much from the great cast, plentiful blood and guts effects and rollicking pace.
The Spierig Brothers' 2003 film Undead was a calling card much enjoyed by Aussie schlock fans. This time, the local filmmakers are back with a much bigger budget and a tasteful smattering of Hollywood names to complement the Aussie cast and give the film a glossy, international feel.
Setting the story ten years into the future also enables them to convincingly inhabit the now-familiar dystopian, grey, glass-towered semi-Americanised urban landscape. The film also has a catchy premise to engage us before the genre-satisfying blood-gushing last two reels.
In this world, almost everyone has been turned into a vampire so that, like Planet Of The Apes, humans are now the frightened minority and a hunted species
Sam Neill is Charles, the ruler of a global blood-dealing corporate empire. Ranged against him are the remnants of a human resistance movement led by Elvis (Willem Dafoe), a still-human guerrilla who lives outside the city.
Dafoe is one of those powerful but eccentric presences who can almost unbalance a movie without trying. Here his natural wildness is put to good use.
The other strand of the story brings in another Hollywood name, with Ethan Hawke as a scientist who discovers something that can undo the powerful elite, and who is forced to go on the run from more or less everybody.
The often underrated Claudia Karvan does a fine job with her winning combination of romantic heroine and action girl.
Other honourable mentions for excellent Aussie performances go to Vince Colosimo and rising star Isabel Lucas
Daybreakers is a rollicking effort with a good loading of body-mangling special effects as it builds toward its climax. One noticeable drawback though is the shameless set-up-a-sequel non-ending. Frankly, this short-changes the audience, but fans of this fare will probably await the birth of yet another vampire franchise with their fangs dripping in anticipation.