Daybreakers - B-

On DVD and Blu-ray.

In 2019, vampires rule the earth but humans and more importantly human blood needed for vampires to survive and thrive are rapidly dwindling. Without human blood, vampires devolve into winged, rabid monsters who attack other vampires. Ethan Hawke plays Edward, a vampire hematologist in search for a substitute for human blood. He's sympathetic toward humans and when he runs across a few, they decide to show him a potential cure for vampirism, which started from virus-transmitted bat bite. He meets Elvis (Willem Dafoe), a former vampire who was able to convert back to his human form, and they decide to confront Edward's former employers . . .

After some disappointing and overcooked turns in What Doesn't Kill You and Staten Island, Hawke gives a surprisingly touching and believable performance in a complex role. Dafoe has some redneck fun spouting some "hillbilly" lines, relishing in his comic relief role. But his face is far too angular to believe he's from the hinterlands. The rest of the cast is filled with mostly Australians (most notably Sam Neill as a shadowy executive) because the film is written and directed by Australian twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig. They have a terrific sense of style both in sets and costumes but also in camera placement and cinematography. If they can shake their ridiculous film-geek obsession with gore and blood, they have tremendous potential.There are story structure problems (What happened to Neill's daughter?) and some lapses in logic (Why couldn't the vampires figure a way out to "farm" humans sooner?). And the film references The Matrix too heavily, but does strike some unique concepts. For horror and futuristic fans (i.e. those without a "lawyer" moniker), you could do a lot worse than this. I drew an economic parallel with the current non-working, non-taxpaying populace sucking the blood out of the country with wasteful entitlement programs. Almost a B, but its quick ending and predictable third act was somewhat of a letdown. B-