‘It’s nuts out there!” exclaims a character in “Daybreakers.” Well, yes: Ten years in the future, vampires rule the world, and the few remaining humans are captives of the state who are literally being bled dry. The scenario is far-fetched. Given that tax revenue is the lifeblood of the state, who seriously believes it’ll take 10 years for this to happen?
Ethan Hawke plays a vampire named (really?) Edward, hence a member of the ruling class (yellowy contact lenses and fangs are issued to all). But because survivors’ guilt is to today’s sci-fi flicks what the Red Scare was to those of the ’50s, he feels really bad about the situation and even helps humans on the run.
Like the corporation he works for, he has no heartbeat yet is immortal. Ed’s boss (Sam Neill) at this slave-blood farm urges Edward, a hematologist, to come up with a marketable blood substitute, and quick. A shortage of humans has led to a shortage of blood, which working-class vamps enjoy drinking in their coffee and which the swells savor in expensive wine glasses. Riots are breaking out as blood is running out.
There must be a noble band of raggedy holdouts fighting the system, but did its leader (Willem Dafoe) really need to be named Elvis, and even to quote the bard of Tupelo in a profound moment of insight about the relationship between darkness and sunlight?
Gloomy Edward is prone to issuing depressed-collegian statements such as, “I’m dead already,” but Elvis is meant to cast a vibe of anarchist fun, like Woody Harrelson in “Zombieland.” Problem: He’s Willem Dafoe. Mr. Anguish. Not that even Harrelson could have gotten big laughs with lines like, “We’re the folks with the crossbows.”
The movie, written and directed by (blood?) brothers Peter and Michael Spierig, is possibly the least sexy vampire flick ever to crawl out of the crypt (it never occurs to anyone that biting someone’s neck is kinda intimate; the act is strictly utilitarian), but it’s unusually detailed in its imagining.
The Spierigs have gone deeply into working out how a vampire-run world might operate. For instance, since vampires can’t encounter daylight, cars have blacked-out windows and are navigated via video monitors.
Such details are fun, but they’re still just details, and they’re all there is to the movie. Even in the final 10 minutes, we’re still in how-it-all-works mode, with new revelations about human-vampire interaction.
The point to the movie is gore and allegory. For the lowbrow, the thrill is a level of fleshy explosiveness reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s “Scanners.” No one dies quietly; he must either detonate like Hiroshima or burst into juicy red chunks of viscera.
For the discerning, the movie seasons the red meat with little flakes of symbolism. You may compare the dwindling blood supply to Earth’s oil reserves, a mass execution to the Holocaust. You may even consider the movie to have interesting thoughts about free will. But if not, it’ll only be a few seconds until someone gets his head gnawed off.