SpierigBrothers

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.

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.