Daybreakers

Debate among my friends is that the vampire mine has been stripped. They've done it all. Nothing else can be said in the matter, unless you're making something about vampires that aren't really vampires. The exploration of the nosferatu is one of the oldest in film history, of course, and the approaches to the subject matter are rich and varied. There are the ancient and secret empires of Underworld, the disturbed loners like Martin, and the Oklahoma trash clan of Near Dark. More often than not, though, it's some tired retread of Dracula or a semi-congealed mess that's been shunted straight to DVD. But now, after the cult hit of Undead, the Spierig brothers kicked a little bit of life into that torpid corpse.

In 2019, vampires rule the earth. Blood supplies across the globe have been exhausted, threatening to cast the austere, shadowy world into chaos. What few humans are left are precious commodities, of course, as Ethan Hawke and his crew at Bromley Marks have yet to successfully synthesize a blood substitute. His boss Bromley, played with the serpentine iciness of Sam Neill, cracks the corporate whip, pushing the team for his own greedy purposes. Meanwhile, the world is quickly sliding into decline. The effects of blood-deprivation aren't just starvation. It twists the otherwise human-like vamps into nasty, feral things - crazed creatures with veined wings and mottled skin. As more and more of the general population tumble down the evolutionary ladder, they go 'full Morlock' and migrate to the sewers. Hawke, with his brood dial turned all the way up to '10', wants to prevent the extinction of the humans. He finds his chance to help when he discovers a small band of living rebels, putting himself at odds with his company, his brother, and the entire vampire race.

Daybreakers is gearing up for its January 8 release and Lionsgate has released two new viral websites in anticipation of the post-apocalyptic vamp flick.

The first site is a play on the pharmaceutical company Bromley/Marks, a powerful vampire run corporation. All the art for the film depicting the big business has been propaganda-esque. I suppose you can see a smudge of that in the vampire chick hairstyles on the site, but overall it feels kind of blah to me. Biggest bummer is that the links don't work. Perhaps they'll fix that.

There's also a site for vampire recruitment over here which features a gaunt vamp asking you to fill out a form to turn your friends to the dark side. If you don't move fast enough he gets pissy with you.

In Daybreakers, Ethan Hawke is Edward Dalton, a vampire researcher who refuses to feed on human blood, and tries to perfect a blood substitute that may sustain vampires and spare the few remaining humans. Enter Audrey, a human survivor who leads him to a startling medical breakthrough. The fate of the human race rests in their hands. The film also stars Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, Michael Dorman and Vince Colosimo. Check out William Goss' Fantastic Fest review of Daybreakers here.

I've been on the fence about the new vampire flick Daybreakers since I saw the first trailer earlier this year. I love the fact that it has actors like Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe in it, but the early clips made the film look a little cold and sterile. Subsequent trailers and advertisements have kept that odd color scheme intact, but the film's action and premise are winning me over in spite of it.

FEARnet landed the newest TV spot for the film yesterday, and I can now say that I'm now fully on-board with this film. It's got the aforementioned actors that I love (plus Ethan Hawke), it's got vampires who're actually monsters, and it looks to feature a nice mixture of action and horror elements. Apparently, I'm an easy man to please.

Jump past the break for a look at the new ad for the film, and be sure to check out our Fantastic Fest review of Daybreakers. The film is slated to hit theaters on January 8th.

It's time for Horror Bites -- your (semi) daily round-up of blood, guts, and torturous mayhem from around the web:

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MTV has nabbed some new stills of the awesome Daybreakers.

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It's time for Horror Bites -- your (semi) daily round-up of blood, guts, and torturous mayhem from around the web:

When the world is taken over by a vampiric plague, they've got to be harvested somehow... MTV has scored a peek at Daybreakers' eerie blood farm.

Arrow in the Head shares a teaser trailer for the horror film Amer, from French filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani who are riffing on Luis Buñuel's razor/eye shot.

Pirate radio isn't only for Happy Harry -- Variety reports that Geoff Bell and Martin Compston will star in a new horror movie called Comedown, where six kids "are targeted by a psychopath when trying to set up a relay aerial for a local pirate radio station."

Fangoria nabbed a clips where Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead gets busy with some horror-style facial reconstruction.

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FEARnet has got an original online series in the works called Fear Clinic, and they've spoken with director Rob Hall about the ins and outs of the new series.

Ten years from now, 95% of the human population has been transformed into vampires, with those few uninfected survivors evading capture as best they can and those already captured being farmed for every last drop of their blood. However, supplies are dwindling, substitutes aren't working, and vampires who are driven by starvation to feed on one another tend to mutate for the worse.

This is the world of Daybreakers, a more ambitious and straight-faced follow-up than anyone might've expected from the Spierig Brothers in the wake of their cheeky low-budget aliens-and-zombies debut, Undead; better yet, it's a smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

HorrorSquad papabear Scott Weinberg is currently at the Toronto International Film Festival getting an early perusal of all kinds of films the rest will have to wait months to see. And to make the wait even worse, it seemed best to bring over a few excerpts from Weinberg's FEARnet reviews of three highly anticipated genre films.

Daybreakers, Directed by the Spierig Brothers, 2009
In other words, if Undead showed you that the filmmakers grew up on great, gory zombie flicks and starry-eyed sci-fi invasions, then Daybreakers indicates that they also really dug John Carpenter, Richard Matheson, Raymond Chandler, and Philip K. Dick. (The eye-dazzling city-scapes found here show a lot of Blade Runner-ish influences, and that's only one of the surface touches.) It's a rock-solid afternoon matinee sort of movie, packed as it is with so many disparate genre influences, not to mention a fine Ethan Hawke performance (as Dalton), and a truly fun turn by Willem Defoe as a vamp-hunter with a big secret. Best of all, everyone from the stars and the directors down to the set designers seem to approach Daybreakers with a cock-eyed grin, but the flick also takes it own universe just seriously enough.

Read his full thoughts here.

By Monika Bartyzel

Over two years ago, Ethan Hawke decided to change things up and go for some vampiric fare by grabbing Daybreakers -- a vampire movie set in the future, and not exactly his normal genre. Now, finally, Yahoo has the trailer, which you can watch after the jump (or right here).

Hawke plays a researcher in 2019 named Edward Dalton. Some pesky plague has turned most of the world's population into vampires, and humans are at the edge of extinction. But seeing that vamps sort of rely on human blood, they've got to farm the remaining humans to keep up their food source, or find a blood substitute. But it isn't a wasteland of chaos -- the vamps are leaders, cops, you name it. As the supply decreases, a rogue crew finds a way to cure vampirism and possibly save the human race, and they enlist Dalton to help.

The trailer has its goofy moments, and I really don't get Hawke's hat-topped getup, but dare I say: this movie looks fun. It's got the teeth and the usual vampiric snarling, but even better -- it's got a twist that hasn't been overused to the point of insanity. There's no teen romance, no vamp/wolf combo. It even plays on our expectations -- this future isn't a post-apocalyptic wasteland of blood, but one that continues societal structures. And best of all, we've got Willem Dafoe getting creepy again as one of the rogues. That's enough for me. You? The film will hit screens on January 8, 2010.