Daybreakers - DVD Release

The reason I finally decided to watch Daybreakers was because Placebo’s cover of ‘Running Up That Hill’ appeared on the trailer.  So after this initial persuasion, I thought I’d try and see through the Twilight/vampire craze that it was created during and see if there was maybe a great film underneath the current fad. But I was, disappointedly, not overly impressed.

Another reason for watching the film was that the plot seemed different to many of the other vampire themed films and TV shows.  It is 2019 and the planet is now predominantly vampire due to some deadly plague, a vague cause that is not fully discussed in the film.  With blood supply, i.e., the human race, dwindling, the race is on to find a blood substitute or, ultimately, a cure.  It soon emerges, however, that some vampires have different priorities and that a cure is not what everyone wants.

So, a good idea in my opinion, but a lack of interesting characters and a failure to fully explore the moral implications of the vampires’ unique dilemmas means that the film ambles along predictably, leaving no room for twists or surprises.  It makes up for its lack of intellectual depth with copious amounts of blood, gore and violence, which, if you’re looking for a simple horror film, is fine.  I guess I just had my hopes up.

To conclude, Daybreakers has a lot of potential but it settles for a run of the mill gory horror film.  This failure to elevate above the norm of vampire tales points to it being a film that was only released, in amidst this vampire fervour, for those who wanted a vampire story with a bit more balls than Twilight.

Roisin O’Brien