2010 Starts With... Daybreakers?!?!

It is a dark time for vampires.  With weird, creepy vampires like Edward Cullen, one almost wishes for the good ol’ days of Kiefer Sutherland running around with a clip-on earring and a whole lot of hair product.  Well, Daybreakers , the first official 2010 film I've seen, has a lot of hair product, so I guess that’s kind of the same thing.  But other than that, these guys are lame.  They don’t have super-strength, super-speed, hypnotic powers, or anything cool at all.  Speaking of cool, they don’t even have the upper-echelon douchebaggery that usually accompanies vampires.  From Bela Lugosi’s Dracula to the Cullen clan, vampires were once considered cool and sexy.  You wouldn't be able to tell with Sam Neill and Ethan Hawke as the prime examples of undead masculinity.  Although this film makes me think that there must exist out there—somewhere, in some screenwriter’s mind—a movie about an inept and socially awkward vampire done in the vein of American Pie or something.  But I digress.
 
I caught the midnight show on Thursday night at Tysons Corner with Hombre Lobo.  It was a toss up between it and Youth in Revolt.  I let Hombre Lobo decide how we’d kick off the 2010 film campaign.  If this film is any indication of how the year will progress, I’m going to shut the blog down immediately, or at least ban Hombre Lobo from my Festivus card list—though this would make an excellent grievance to air. 
 
Okay, I may be getting a little ahead of myself.  Daybreakers’ conceit is simple: vampires have taken over the world via a virus and spend their days sipping on blood-laced coffees and hunting down the few humans that still exist.  That is, except for Edward Dalton, played by Ethan Hawke.  Dalton’s a hematologist in search of an artificial blood/food supply and refuses to feed on human blood and pines to rejoin the human race.  He’s a brooding, angst-ridden doctor with the weight of the world on his shoulders and with a brooding, angst-ridden brother who loves being a vampire.  One wonders if Hawke simply hates looking for other types of characters to play.  Anyway, so Dalton works for this company headed by Charles Bromley (Neill).  Neill, I guess, thought it would be brilliant to channel Agent Smith from The Matrix to play a powerful, corrupt vampire in charge of the world’s critically low blood supply.  It just doesn’t work.  He comes off as smarmy, silly, and not the least bit interesting.  Bromley wants Dalton to discover a substitute blood supply but would refuse to stop hunting humans even after the fact. 
 
If the vampires don’t get enough blood, they degenerate into these insane, violent, monstrous bat-like creatures that feed on their own bodies and other vampire’s blood.  So that’s bad.  So things happen, new friendships are born, Dalton grows a set of balls, there’s an incredibly stiff and useless love story, blah, blah blah.  It’s pretty fucking standard.  Now, it’s not Avatar-predictable, but it pretty much follows the same type of cut-and-paste generic storyline.  But somehow, even WITH that obvious story structure in place, the filmmakers have decided to fuck it all up in the hopes of sprucing it up a bit. But instead, they ended up creating so many plot holes that by the end, I wasn’t sure whether it was poor filmmaking or my own inattentiveness that made me scratch my head in wonder. 
 
Then there’s the moral of the film.  Not very subtle.  At all.  But Hollywood never is.  Here comes an in-your-face tale about moderation and finding balance in a world of over-consumption and instant gratification. It waggles its finger in our faces the entire time, as if to say, “Hey buddy.  Cool it.  Why go overboard with our resources?  This could happen to us.”  Private companies are evil, and we need to stop our reliance on oil, blood, water, botox, whatever, it’s all the same shit if it’s in short supply.  Then there were the social lessons.  Yawn.  The poor can’t afford the blood, so they become the monsters, and then the rich vampires have to put those fuckers down with extreme prejudice.  So survival is as corrupt as our society.  That’s fine and good, but really, I don’t need to be preached to through such a poor film.  If you want to make us think, why don’t you try thinking up a good movie first, assholes?
 
So why even bother watching this movie?  Well, two things.  First, Willem Dafoe is in it.  That’s right, bitches.  Jesus Christ, Green Goblin, the bad guy from Streets of Fire himself.  He’s Elvis, a badass with a crossbow, a beard, and a penchant for voice-over monologues.  I just about threw my manties at the screen.  It quickly becomes obvious that Dafoe’s having the most fun he's had in a role since The Boondock Saints.  And the second thing to make it worth your trip?  Well, Daybreakers is stupid, and it’s easy to get through.  I don’t know if that’s a ringing endorsement, but that’s as good as you’re going to get from me.  Oh, and the special effects are pretty good. 
 
Cost breakdown: $0.00.
 
Hombre Lobo picked up the tab on this one, and he drove too.  So was it worth it?  Yeah, definitely.  But I’d skip this in the theaters if I had to pay.  Catch it on TV.
 
My review of Youth in Revolt should be up soon.  Till then, Pork Chop Express signing off.