Daybreakers

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Embrace The Distant Light Of The Sun


          Let’s face it: the ‘vampire film’ is a dying breed (yes that also includes the Twilight films).  It seems like all of the originality has been sucked dry from this allegorical genre, which makes it fitting then that Daybreakers would tell the story of the world in 2019 (only 9 years away!), as ruled by vampires who find themselves on the brink of extinction.  In this not-so-distant future world, human beings make up only 5 % of its population.  As such, the dwindling human blood supply is creating havoc on this newly immortal planet of vampires.  Hence, the ruling vampire government is forced to hunt down the remaining human population and store them in a massive vault, so that they may preserve their blood supply and eventually create an abundance of imitation human blood.  Yes, indeed, vampire movies can be rather silly.

          The legend of the vampire was never meant to be taken seriously on a literal level, but rather a metaphorical one.  This vampire/human allegory (beginning with Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula) has formed the shape of many different metaphors throughout human history.  Depending on the historical context of their times, many authors and filmmakers alike have created vampire stories which subtly - or not so subtly – mirrored the societies in which they lived.  The same can be said about the Spierig brothers film Daybreakers.  While keeping with the longstanding traditions of the vampire legend, the Spierig brothers (who also penned the script) have updated the genre to our narcissistic times of fierce consumerism and lackluster humanitarianism.  With our modern day society replete with online consumerism, social networking, and endless shopping malls, Daybreakers is a fitting testament to our own world of forgotten humanity.

          Sometimes it seems like our world is trying all the harder to forget (or neglect) the pains and tribulations of human existence.  We constantly trick ourselves into believing that the more we consume or the more we have, the easier it will be to forget our pain.  However, it is through these pain-driven gains that we continuously find ourselves revisiting the worst of our pasts.  In Daybreakers’ finer moments, this unrelenting reality acts as the driving force to its storytelling.

        
          In all vampire stories, the vampire is simply a reflection of our ugly side as human beings.  With Daybreakers, this ugly side becomes the fallibility of the human race to recognize and accept the reality of pain and destruction.  Daybreakers tells the story of a vampire named Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a valued government worker helping the vampire cause of finding a cure for the human blood (or lack thereof) epidemic.  Unfortunately, for the vampires, Edward feels empathetic towards the remaining humans, and is thus wary of the government’s systematic approach in hunting down the minority human race.  It isn’t until Edward meets Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac (Willem Dafoe), a human who used to be a vampire, that he discovers the ultimate method for curing the extinction of his vampire race.

          The method is deceptively simple, but one which nonetheless poses an inevitable question:  Duh??!  Why did they not think of that before?  Everyone knows by now that vampires have only one weakness: the sunlight.  If they are in direct contact with sunlight, they will die within minutes.  Lionel’s back-story of how he became human again is surprisingly moving and poetic.  In a car accident, Lionel was ejected midair into the daylight, which, due to the open sunlight, caused his body to burst into flames.  Upon landing in a dark tunnel of a nearby creek, Lionel gets up and discovers that he has not only survived the accident, but has also become human again.  He then comes to realize that episodic exposure to direct sunlight can transform a vampire back into a human being.  This fantastical scene not only functions as a key plot twist, but eventually serves the movie as a philosophical motif for the human condition.

          Unfortunately, there are only a few such intriguing facets to the movie.  Otherwise, the film ends up getting bogged down in highly clichéd action sequences and equally corny dialogue.  Despite the film’s unevenness and awkward transitions, howver, it still manages to absorb its audience with moments of thoughtful introspection.  With its focal point centering on the evolutionary idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’, Daybreakers takes the traditional vampire metaphor and spins it back towards human decency.  Through employing the idea of the vampires’ intermittent exposure to daylight, the Spierig brothers have taken the ugly side of the vampire (human) psyche and have used it as a means for teaching a valuable lesson: the more we stay away from either the absence or presence of light the more immediate the burning of pain will be.

          Given the fact that Daybreakers relies too heavily on its central concept, it can hardly be called a groundbreaking vampire movie.  If it weren’t for this one sharp thematic twist or Willem Dafoe’s performance, Daybreakers would be tedious at best and laughable at worst.  Thankfully, Dafoe puts forth his gritty acting style and carries with him some of the best lines and scenes in the movie.  Standing next to him, however, is Ethan Hawke, who continues to look like a deer caught in headlights.  Despite the film’s flaws, it is a worthwhile movie-going experience.  It is deserving of one’s time if not for its slight resurrection of the vampire concept, then at least for its valiant effort in trying to make something artful out of something fundamentally ridiculous.  However, before seeing this or any other vampire movie, one should be prepared to embrace its distance from the ordinary, so that the extraordinary can be less painful to endure.