CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

BobbyTarantino The idea behind the movie is genious. A bat-bourne plague that has turned nearly every human on the planet into vampires. The vampires struggle to survive due to limited amounts of human blood remaining. It's an amazing idea, and the new "vampire world" is beautifully crafted. Cars that are can drive the vampires around in the sunlight, coffee-shops that serves different bloodtypes down in the subway. Unfortunately for us the plot, struture, and visuals are lacking, and lowers the movie down to another generic splatter movie. I would recommend watching the movie just for the screenwriting. It's a cool world the screenwriters created, that had a lot of potensial. I would love to see a graphic novel adaption of the world we see in "daybreakers".

dglink In a world dominated by bloodsuckers, human blood is a precious resource, and, with a dwindling number of flesh-and-blood people, the world's food supply is threatened. A giant pharmaceutical company farms humans for their blood, but is researching a substitute product as their original source dwindles toward extinction. The intelligent intriguing premise lifts "Daybreakers" above run-of-the-mill vampire movies and suggests that capitalism flourishes even among the undead.Original, well written, and sharply directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, the Australian horror film is entertaining and maintains a decent pace, although the violence and especially the gore are over the top at times; Australia's supply of fake blood must have been exhausted during filming. The Spierig Brother's script suggests that some traditions persist from ancient vampire lore: the undead do not reflect in mirrors, their eyes have an unearthly glow, they bite their victims in the neck, and they savor the finest blood in crystal stemware. Ben Nott's cinematography uses creative color effects to create a nightmarish nether world in the year 2019. While respective of tradition, "Daybreakers" is a 21st-century vampire film; the vamps live in quiet residential neighborhoods in stylish homes sealed from light and not a coffin in sight. The undead have customized cars that shield them from UV rays during daytime driving, and they use underground walkways and overhead tunnels to get around when the sun shines. Cable networks broadcast images and dire news of unrest throughout the world.A distinguished trio of fine actors bring credence and class to the film. Ethan Hawke is Edward Dalton, a vampire sympathetic to humans, who is researching the blood substitute and stumbles upon an alternate course of action. Hawke's boss is the always malevolent-looking Sam Neill, who plays Charles Bromley, the head bloodsucker at the pharmaceutical enterprise. Veteran of another fine vampire flick, "Shadow of the Vampire," Willem Dafoe plays Elvis Cormac, an enigmatic individual, who has returned from the undead. "Daybreakers" is an intelligent update of an old theme; the acting by a seasoned cast is above average, and the untold pints of fake blood, numerous gratuitous explosions, and countless severed body parts should keep fans of the action-vampire genre satisfied.

Alyssa Black (Aly200) What if we lived in a world where vampires have to harvest humans in order for them to survive overpopulation and a dwindling blood supply? That's the basic premise of this Australian horror film and it does stand out midst the over-saturation of vampire films over the last decade. Boasting a couple A-list names in the cast, the performances are quite solid: Ethan Hawke plays Dr. Edward 'Ed' Dalton, a vampire scientist who has been disillusioned with his immortal lifestyle for a long time. After a chance encounter with a human female resistance member (Claudia Karvan), Ed is soon pulled into the fight to end the vampire reign of terror for a new blood supply. Hawke brings a vulnerability and almost youthful world-weariness as Ed, portraying him more like a human trapped in a vampire's body, longing to be free of the curse of needing human blood to live. Hawke's costar chemistry is enjoyable as he has an underlying flirtatious yet compassionate affection for Claudia Karvan's Audrey to a uneasy (at first) but loyal friendship that develops with Willem Dafoe's Lionel "Elvis" Cormac.Playing the bad-ass, crossbow wielding Lionel or better known as Elvis is the bearded and always enjoyable Willem Dafoe. Adopting a solid Southern drawl that draws from his character's nickname's sake, Dafoe brings his usual grizzled persona to the former vampire turned human. Being a world-weary resistance fighter, Elvis doesn't hesitate to remind the new recruit, Edward, what the world has come to in the crisis happening around them. Dafoe doesn't hesitate to add some humor to the character in order to defuse the tension in a scene; most evident in Elvis and Edward's first meeting where Dafoe sings a few bars of an Elvis Presley song or during a tense meeting with one of Edward's former colleagues where Dafoe quips a scorching one-liner to who he and Audrey are, "we're the folks with the crossbows." As the sole female lead, Claudia Karvan's Audrey is no damsel in distress despite being taken hostage near the end of the film. Audrey doesn't hesitate to pull her crossbow on Edward when they first meet when Audrey and some other humans are escaping to the safe-haven of the vineyard. However she grows to trust Ed after he aids her and her fellow humans' escape and when Ed agrees to help find a cure. Audrey's loyalty is more than evident to Ed when he sees the bond Audrey has with Elvis; she saved the latter's life after Elvis was burned by the sun which rendered him back to human form. Karvan and Hawke's Ed almost develop a budding romance as the film moves forward, but the filmmakers don't taint the narrative by keeping the relationship between them as cordial and more like comrades in arms.The movie exudes a gloomy atmosphere by utilizing specific color palettes like grays dark blues for the cityscape where the vampires live, dark shades of yellow for the countryside vineyard where our heroes hide from the threat of being captured by vampire militia and of course red is a dominant color due to the presence of blood in a vampire film.Enjoyable for any vampire movie fan.

Anssi Vartiainen Vampires have taken over the world and the last remaining humans flee for their lives in the protecting light of the day, hunted and exploited. As for the vampires, nothing much has changed from their lives as living humans. People still go to work with their coffees, cars inhabit the motorways and special occasions are celebrated with a bottle. Except that in this case the coffee is laced with blood, the cars have protections against the sun and the bottles are filled with pure, uncut human heart blood. But now they face the problem of human extinction. There are almost no humans left to feed from and animal blood can only sustain you for so long. So what are the vampires to do?Daybreakers does a few things very well. The society inhabited entirely by vampires is an interesting one and handled with the right amount of dry satirical humour. The story that starts to unfold as the vampires look for a substitute is not a bad one and the inevitable cure for vampirism that gets developed – because of course it has that cliché – is at least something that I haven't seen before.Unfortunately that's also the film's biggest failing. The original cure introduced is good and certainly not something you see in every movie. But then it gets shunted aside for the more clichéd cure mechanisms and the whole final third of the movie falls into mindless splatter, gore and butchery. Mind, it's not bad gore, especially given the modest budget, but it's still disappointing because the beginning had dazzled us with its originality and promises of something new and different.Still, the movie has its definite upsides and is worth a watch if you want a slightly different take on the vampire genre.