That Bites

Courtesy of www.filmofilia.com

The thought of immortality has both fascinated and terrified people for thousands of years. Generally in folklore those who are immortal have to pay a price. For the vampires, the price is drinking blood and spending their existence in the dark. Being a night person, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have to spend my waking life at night, but drinking blood would really suck.

The movie "Daybreakers", now streaming via Netflix's Instant Play, imagines a world where vampires are the majority population. The vampire’s sustenance, human blood, becomes a rare commodity. Those that choose not to become a vampire either live in hiding or risk being “farmed” for blood.

 The story is about a vampire scientist (Edward) that is working on creating a “blood substitute”. He works for a large corporation that supplies blood, and begins to feel empathy for the humans being drained of their blood. Through a series of events he secretly works with humans  in order to discover a cure to the problem that now threatens both the human and the vampire race.

A fascinating aspect to “Daybreakers” was the vampire sub race. In the movie, if a vampire was deprived of blood for too long they became a ruthless animalistic type created with wings. When the blood supply decreased, since blood was produced by a private corporation the blood prices skyrocketed. Of course, not every vampire could afford to buy the blood so they turned into bat like creatures and began wreaking chaos throughout the city. When things got too out of control they were destroyed by being forced into the sunlight by the vampires. The reason I thought this scenario was interesting, is because it kind of represents how modern society works, in a less extreme way.

Overall, I found the movie’s plot to be choppy and inconsistent. The acting and characters were excellent, but the film tried to intertwine too many plots. The movie ending was left completely open to one’s imagination, nothing was completely resolved. There was also too much gore.  I can understand how some gore was needed to enhance the story, but some of the scenes went over the top. The concept behind Daybreakers had the makings for a great movie, but simply fell a little short.

Daybreakers was entertaining, but just wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. This movie, for the first time ever, made me thankful I am not a vampire......