Determined To Succeed

Run For Your Life From “Daybreakers” – ½ Bucket of Popcorn out of Four

Oh man. I am shaking my head right now trying to figure out how to sink my teeth into this review of “Daybreakers.” I always jump at the chance to see vampire flicks but after seeing this one I ran from the theater like a bat out of hell.

In the year 2019, a plague has transformed almost every human into vampires with the remainders on the run from companies who harvest their blood to sell to the population.. Faced with a dwindling blood supply (you can only drain humans so much, after all), the fractured dominant race plots their very survival as those who go “blood deprived” start to devolve and attack their own mutating into horrible creatures known as “subsiders.”  Meanwhile, a researcher (played by Ethan Hawke – what the hell happened to him!) works with a covert band of vamps and humans to find a way to save human and vampire kind.

Where do I begin with this mess of a movie? I’d thought this movie would have some bite to it. I mean it’s got a decent cast (Dafoe, Hawke and Neill) and I totally eat up vampire flicks (except for the insipid tween-age “Twilight” movie series that is) but what in God’s name were they thinking with this script? This movie is the worst I’ve seen in a long time. Did the filmmakers think we’d all be drunk or something seeing this boring, vapid vampire flick? “How much better on paper this must have looked and sounded” is what I’m thinking. How else could they get those guys in the same movie that steals blatently from good movies like “The Matrix,” “I Am Legend,” “Zombieland” and more.

You really wanna know how bad this movie was? I almost walked out, and I never do that. Ever. There are two reasons I am giving it ½ star (or ¼ star per reason). 1) because of the “cure” they find. It worked enough for me when almost nothing else did. 2) because it is not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, or even saw last year. That honor goes to a very little known flick I purchased on DVD called “Immortal” – a part bad CGI, part live action all craptastic movie featuring the Egyptian god Horus, a Blade Runner rip-off society and Charlotte Rampling. It was a zero-bucket-of-popcorn flick.

As for “Daybreakers,” run back to your coffins and hide from this one. Even when it starts showing up for free on cable. I felt drained after watching this waste of an hour-and-a-half of my life.

And to the filmmakers – “fangs for nuthin’” guys. Your movie – wait for it – sucks.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and brief nudity

Runtime: 98 min

Ethan Hawke    …         Edward Dalton

Sam Neill          …         Charles Bromley

Willem Dafoe    …         Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac

Claudia Karvan …        Audrey Bennett