January 23, 2010

Review: Daybreakers (2010)

"The first horror flick of the new decade is here, and it's... pretty good!"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433362/
In Attendance- Me, Machine, Dave and... Machine's Dad?!?
Cast Members of Note- Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan and the HOT as all hell Isabel Lucas.

Daybreakers begins with a scene showing a cute little girl committing suicide by setting herself on fire. From that point on, any illusions we had about this movie being some cheesy romantic turd pile like Twilight, went right out the window. Thank God.

"Maybe we could kill Edward Cullen with fire?"
In 2019, Vampires rule the earth. The few humans that are left either hide out to avoid becoming food, or are hooked to machines and farmed for their blood, thus becoming food. So, either way, food. Problems with this genius system arise when the Vampires realize that soon, there won't be any humans left to milk, and they will all be screwed. Why are they screwed you ask? Well because without blood to sustain them, the bloodsuckers will become half-Vampire, half-mongoloid atrocities.

Vampoloid.
Not wanting to turn into uncivilized monsters, there are those amongst the Vamps that are trying to find a cure for their "condition." One of them (Ethan Hawke), along with the help of Elvis and some hot chick, race against all time and hope to find a cure for Vampirism and save the world, and reestablish the dominance of the Human Race. Lead by Ethan Hawke. Think about that one. Ethan Hawke is humanity's only hope. Yeah.

"Yeah! Go kick some ass... Ethan Hawke?"
Daybreakers was a pretty damn decent Vampire movie. Not only did it offer us a ton of blood and gore, but the look and feel of the everyday Vampire Society was really interesting to witness. I expected more action, and a little more Vampire badness, but overall it worked with what it was trying to achieve; a look at a normal, average Vampire Society, if such a thing is possible.

Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill are great in this one too, but then when are they ever not great? They're so good that they even made me believe that Ethan Hawke was good too, which he kinda was. Wow, I just said that. You win this round, Ethan Hawke.

He always plays an awesome bad guy.
Jump scares. Do we really need a bat to suddenly fly into the camera, accompanied by a sharp and loud musical cue, only to fly out of the camera just as quickly? Oh, that's real scary. This movie certainly didn't need any of that crap, and it made me wince in shame and pain, more than once.

That CGI fire was cool though.
I'm a bit upset that Isabel Lucas didn't get more screen time. She's so cute, and her character could have been so much more integral to the plot instead of just showing up and being rushed out of the storyline. Did I mention how adorably cute she was?

Like she reads books LOL
 
Vampire suicide, exploding VampiresVampire vomiting, staking, decapitation, pouring blood, dripping blood, splashing blood... in short, yes, it's all kinds of gory.

Gore is good. Gore works.
We get some human boobage, but it's not very sexy or hot.

"Living in a world where Vampires are the dominant species is about as safe as bare-backing a 5 dollar whore." Classic.

He's laughing, you just can't tell.
Ethan Hawke doesn't suck as much as we originally believed. Also, Vampires are people too. But not really.

Also, vampire children are really unsettling to look at.
Aside from the fact that we expected to see an all out Vamp vs. Human war, and didn't, this was a pretty enjoyable bloodsucker flick. The premise was interesting, and the blood flowed freely, which is really all we can really ask from a movie like this. It could have been a bit tighter in places, but all in all if you dig Vampires, you'll probably dig this movie. Check it out if it's still in a Theater near you.

B-

Daybreakers is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ZG97D8/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002ZG97D8&linkCode=as2&tag=thehorclu0a-20&linkId=GPZ3WTBM62EMHQUB

Well hello there, Isabel Lucas.

5 comments :

  1. oh, this is that movie directed by the brothers who made that Aussie indie classic 'Undead' which had zombie fish. I thought this was gonna be cheese on toast until i remembered it was by the Undead crew.

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  2. I loved Undead. It's a classic right up there with Black Sheep and Severance for me.

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  3. I LOOOOVE the way you review the flicks. You are the God Reviewer. There, you got a title now. Will keep coming back for more :)

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  4. I'm somewhat surprised you liked this film so much. I found it very blase. I didn't have a ton of terrible things to say about it but I was mostly just bored when things weren't exploding vampire guts everywhere.

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  5. It started so nicely... 10 minutes with no dialogue, all that dark vibe... then it turned into vampire Matrix. It could have been so much better.

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