Film: Daybreakers

Okay, so some people have made the assumption that I watch a lot of really gory disgusting stuff. While I do watch scary stuff, the point is that it is scary. It's so simple: a scary film is scary. You're not supposed to feel good, you're supposed to be scared. In a rom-com, you're supposed to laugh and fall in love.

That being said, Daybreakers is a vampire film and there was some gore, so maybe not a film for the kids. The premise is that vampires have hunted humans almost to extinction and are going to go extinct themselves if they don't come up with a viable synthetic blood, and pronto. There is a rag-tag band of humans trying to shelter together and fight against the vampires out to get them.

I feel bad giving it this much room because certain things in the film just do not connect. As in, the film has almost zero interest in the vampires: how they live, what they do, how their social structure is ordered. You just have to know they want your blood. The humans do what humans always do in these sorts of movies: drive SUVs way too fast while being excited/agitated and screaming "what do we do now?"

As far as the central plot -- there are no more human to take real blood from (and we do know vampires will descend into Nosferato-like creatures if they drink their own blood) -- some might think its an oil allegory. You could also say that the vampires have set in motion a kind of fascist order (all the vampires look sharp) that falls apart when pressed. But falls into what? And if you want to stick with the oil allegory, then what does it mean that there are survivors in the end?

SPOILER

The human survivors find out that if they can set themselves on fire from daylight and then extinguish the flames, they'll turn back into humans. If a vampire is to use such a person to drink from, that vampire will turn back into a human. So the movie ends with vampires descending on new humans, and they in turn become human which means more vampires attack them, wash, rinse, repeat.

So if there is a way to turn the vampires back into humans where they become fodder for other vampires, what does that mean to the oil allegory? That with the right technology we can survive (?). What about the fascist allegory? It's confusing.

It's a film that could have been a lot better with a bit more care and thought.