Monday, October 07, 2013

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 1



A few years in the future a plague has transformed most of the human race into vampires, and with less than 5% of the human population remaining, their blood supply is running really low leading to rationing. Ethan Hawke plays a hematologist racing against the clock to come up with a synthetic blood alternative as vampires deprived of blood are transforming into a feral, bat-like predatory species. He later takes up with a small band of humans who have discovered a means of turning the vampires back into humans, but the vampires in authority like things just the way they are.

Daybreakers (2009) has a premise full of possibility, a capable cast, and some lovely art direction, but it's a pretty boring movie. It's all about talking and procedures interspersed with car chases and gun fights with all of the important character development taking place off screen such as the relationship between vampire pharmaceutical big wig Sam Neill and his human daughter Isabel Lucas. It seems as if there was too much material to fit into one movie but they mistakenly removed the interesting, important stuff, and kept in all the extraneous material. It would have worked much better as a television series where time could be taken to develop the story, the characters and their relationships and the world that they inhabit.




1 comment:

Wings1295 said...

That might be my biggest gripe with a lot of the Syfy Channel type horror flicks - BORING! I can handle cheap effects, so-so acting and even plot hole leaps. But make the thing worthy of my time!