Toronto FilmFest Reviews: Daybreakers

Some director--Truffaut, I think?--said that the best way to criticize a film is to make another film. In many cases that's true even if we mean "criticize" in an objective sense--to explore the ideas presented in one film further in another. With genre films this can make a movie a de facto sequel, or the launch of a subgenre. For instance, the Canadian film "Fido" was clearly inspired by the world we glimpsed at the end of "Shaun of the Dead"--which was, in and of itself, a riff on Romero's Living Dead movies. Far from being a bad thing, this can lead to some very satisfying film experiences.

With "Daybreakers", Australian brothers Peter and Michael Spierig have made one of these "and then what?" movies, in this case asking the question I think most of us did after finishing I Am Legend or watching one of its many cinematic descendants: "OK, but if vampires took over the world, wouldn't they run out of blood prety fast?" The Spierig's answer: yes. Yes they would. And that's prcisely what sets this plot in motion.

It's the year 2019, ten years after the by-now familiar vampire plague has transformed 99.9% of humanity into blood-drinkers. (And yes, the extremely contemporary date is a bit confusing. This movie may be technically out of date by the time it hits video.) The world has been born anew in the image of these cadaverous creatures, who have put futuristic technology to their use, with sunlight-blocking vehicle windows, automatic announcements reciting the hours left until sunrise, and fresh hot blood on tap at your local diner. This last is the work of companies like Bromley Marks, run by Sam Neill, which has stuck the majority of the surviving human population into blood farming-tracts that are exactly as creepy as you'd think.

It's here that vampire hematologist Ed Dalton (Ethan Hawke) comes in. He's retained enough of his humanity to feel sorry for humans, and is therefore working hard on a blood substitute which will allow the vamps to lay off their prey, maybe even let them co-exist. As it happens, though, Bromley has a much more pressing reason for this blood substitute: even if all the remaining fugitive humans were to be rounded up--and there aren't many of them--the blood supply would be gone in about a month, due to the vast discrepancy between the two populations. And while vamps, of course, don't die, blood deprivation causes them to mutate into mindless, batlike monsters, who are a danger to other vamps.

After a run-in with some humans, Hawke is forced to reevaluate his priorities when he discovers one human, Lionel "Elvis" Cormac (Willem Dafoe, stealing the movie) has a solution to their problem...just one that's drastically different from what they would have expected.

(I want to talk about this next plot point, which comes *fairly* early on--like at the half-hour mark--and has been spoiled by the trailers, but it would still be cooler not to know it, so I'm issuing a SPOILER WARNING.)

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Elvis's secret is that he was once a vampire, and through a fluke accident he was "cured". Ed realizes that this is the real solution to their problem, that the vampire lifestyle is unsustainable, and sets out trying to duplicate the results. Unfortunately, becoming human again isn't the answer most vamps are looking for; they like being top of the food chain and enjoying the privileges that come with it. The powers that be fight back, and Ed finds himself joining the resistance.

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(END SPOILER)

Even without the spoilers, you can probably tell that the Spierigs have really run with the premise. The first half of the movie consists of very witty worldbuilding that by itself is worth the price of admission. The vampire society is extremely well etched, similar enough to ours to be satirical (vampires still love their creature comforts, and that means they have to go to work in the morning like anyone else) yet with the constant reminder that, yes, these are unhuman monsters. That last point becomes stronger as the film goes on and the story spirals into a pure action-horror flick, yet remarkably, the movie's central theme only gets stronger.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, the metaphor here involves environmental and resource depletion, which is such a perfect fit for this premise that you can't help but slap your forehead and go "of course!" And no matter how monstrous the vampires become, you can't get away from the fear that, vampires or no, our world may be heading in this direction soon anyway. Our civilization is facing choices every bit as tough as the fictional monsters in this movie, which only drives the point home harder: we have to stop being vampires and start being people.