Originally posted on Critical Malfunction on 10 August 2015.
Vampires have been a staple, through a few lulls, of cinema since the earliest days, from Nosferatu to Lugosi to Lee. Alas, there have been recent rumblings of the monsters’ complete collapse in credibility following their degeneration into self-loathing, vegetarian love interests. Whether or not this is true may only be determined by historians to come, but the throes of death can throw up some curiosities. Daybreakers is a vampire film unlike any other I have seen; a blend of science fiction, horror, and dystopia that embraces the traditional legend of the vampire and runs with it to an intriguing conclusion. Updating classic horror can go hideously wrong – urban fantasy has been unkind to the gothic classics – but this is not one of those cases.
It’s a tired cliché that the vengeful gods of old will go hungry and unappeased in our decadent modern age of sexual permissiveness, nubile virgins becoming rarer than dogs who speak Norwegian. However, this raises the pertinent point that the oddly specific requirements of magical creatures will tend to run into difficulties. In this case the vampires’ need for human blood in particular is a supply/demand nightmare waiting to happen. At best procuring your food source kills the supplier in no time at all, and at worst it merely creates another ravenous consumer. Therein lies the central problem of the world as run by vampires. Like oil, the rainforest, and the Creme Egg, blood isn’t going to last forever. Oddly there is no attempt to factory farm the human prey, side-stepping a potential ‘evils of the meat industry’ metaphor. The closest we get is a blood substitute experiment gone horribly awry; this sanguine tofu has explosively bad results. So while vampires may work well in isolation, with a ready supply of squishy victims, their specialised dietary needs turn them into the supernatural equivalent of pandas. Doomed by their own biology.
This is not to say that the vampiric civilisation is without its triumphs. Where Daybreakers really stands out is in the construction of a world that caters to the proclivities of the average nocturnal, haemophagic, violently photophobic citizen. Naturally the world has largely gone (more?) nocturnal, but between extensive tunnels of “Subwalks” and tinted car windows, the vampires’ most ubiquitous weakness has become a minor inconvenience. The largest corporation in the world is now no longer provides distracting electronic doodads or bargain toilet paper but life-giving plasma. Full credit must be given to Sam Neill’s Charles Bromley for hitting on an industry even more viscerally addicting than miscellaneous gadgetry. This is the most memorable aspect of the movie, a world in which the monsters have won, and reshape a recognisable metropolis in their own image. This may be grand and existentially terrifying, but the practical problems of life still need to be addressed. If you’re going to live forever, basic comforts are even more important than for us fleeting mortals.
Your classic movie vampire is not a mindless monstrosity but a better class of monster, masking his blood-lust behind a veil of suave urbanity. Bromley is a worthy addition to this heritage, partially due to Neill’s own screen presence, by equal measures charming, paternal and predatory. He is a man very comfortable in his station, both as an immortal and as a CEO taking advantage of a virtual monopoly on blood. Yet beneath this cold smugness is a strangely sympathetic core. Dying of cancer, his transformation was nothing short of a saving grace, instilling in him an unshakable sense of right and leaving him unable to fathom why anyone would resist the change. For him the advent of the vampire has been nothing but good. His privilege is showing, because this view would be loudly contested by the few surviving humans, and even the vast majority of the undead populace, slowly starving into madness beneath him. While Bromley is content to fund the much-needed blood substitute, this is mere expediency for the hoi polloi. For an elite like him, genuine human blood must remain as a delicacy.
Vampires tend to function as diabolical villains to be overcome, a manifestation of vaguely sexual violence to be overcome by the chaste and pious protagonist. In fewer instantiations, they are the tortured and tragic hero, trying to resist their dark impulses. Though Ethan Hawke’s Edward Dalton lacks both trenchcoat and katana, he is as much a hero as Bromley is a villain, putting his own welfare at great risk in adherence to his principles. Vampirism is separable, not without effort, from evil insofar as it is not a complete description of a character. Dalton aims to vitiate the horrendous corollaries of being a vampire through his scientific research, initially not even interested in a cure. Even when he discovers the remedy, his motive remains the same – to remove the need to feast on the sparse remnants of humankind. There is a comparison to be drawn with I Am Legend (the novel and not the execrable, focus-grouped film version), that the frightening or otherworldly nature of a character does not necessarily mean that they are not people, with entirely relatable and even laudable motives. Even in a world populated entirely by bloodthirsty children of the night, the good still do the best they can, and the bad do their worst.
Innovation in most of its forms ought to be respected even when it misses the mark. Daybreakers is not a great film – my impression upon seeing it on the big screen was of a B-movie that had somehow stumbled onto a budget – but is a solidly good one. It takes a concept that has been done to death, and takes it in a fresh and interesting direction that doesn’t involve smouldering pretty-boys or archaic sexual politics. If you want to see how the vampires rise and fall, or are fascinated by the potential quandaries of a world of the fussiest eaters imaginable, this is pretty much the only game in town.
