Hollywood Product: Daybreakers (1)

GENRE: Intellectual vampire thriller

THE PITCH: In the near future, a plague has infected the majority of the world’s population, transforming them into bloodthirsty vampires. Naturally, the remaining humans become the primary food. The blood supply reaches critical levels and society starts to break down. Vampire hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) desperately seeks a substitute, but is recruited by the humans to unlock the medical mystery within human-turned-vampire-turned-human-again Elvis Cormac (Willem Dafoe), which could hold humanity’s salvation.

VAMP FACTOR: These vampires are of the frou-frou variety more akin to TV’s “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries” or the Twilight movies. They’re handsome, well-groomed, and have blood-red eyes and not-so-pale skin. Their main weakness, of course, is sensitivity to sunlight (or ultraviolet radiation if you wanna be technical). If they don’t consume blood, however, they morph into freakishly feral Nosferatu-looking bat creatures that feed on other vampires.

MONEY SHOTS: Dalton and Cormac throw down the gauntlet against a horde of hungry vampires while trying to deliver the cure to Dalton’s former boss, Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). It’s like Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn at its bloodiest, but inside a New York high-rise and sublevel parking decks.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: Daybreakers”

(Photo by Ben Rothstein)