STARRING: ETHAN HAWKE, WILLEM DAFOE
GIVEN the several hundred other vampire films, books and TV shows it's going up against at the moment, this latest take on the blood-sucker myth deserves some credit for coming up with a compelling, well-executed premise. Ten years into an epidemic that has made vampires the dominant species on Earth, their constant plundering of natural resources (that's us) has ensured that genuine human blood is in critically short supply. With large numbers of this suddenly starving population set to devolve into cannibalistic vampire maniacs, a workable blood substitute is desperately required to avert chaos. Enter reluctant vampire Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a haematologist with human sympathies who works for the biggest blood bank in the country. He's days away from a developing a blood substitute, but when he accidentally stumbles upon a cure, he finds himself taking up with the human resistance and hunted down by his company's evil CEO (Sam Neil). Stylishly made by Australian directing brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, this is a vampire film unafraid to bare its fangs and, with a decent cast and a solid, admirably economical script that packs in plenty of themes and ideas, Daybreakers is one of the most purely pleasurable genre films of recent months.
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By Alistair Harkness
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