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The first 20 to 25 minutes of Daybreakers are possibly the best thing to come out of vampire movies in years. Imagination and narrative power are a mix that don't always go hand in hand and, sadly, often prove unsatisfactory in the attempts made.
The last two years have been a time when you don't follow the crowd: while the Twilight franchise broke box office records with its baby-toothed vampires, other films in the sub-genre have emerged at the same time, trying to turn the tables and make it their own brand.
On the one hand there is Park Chan-wook's ‘Longing’ and on the other ‘Let the Right One In’, while on television at the same time there is the HBO series ‘True Blood’. <Daybreakers, or the first half hour as we have already said, joins the latter group, the ‘resistance’.
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Vampires were not scary, they were not creatures from beyond the grave reappearing due to some not-so-obvious curse, and they did not try to jump on the neck of the first maiden who came within their reach.
In fact, society has changed and vampires have taken over the world, leaving humans restricted and almost extinct. What would a vampire do without blood? According to recent research, their thirst turns them into anthropomorphic (evil) bats, very ugly, savage and without conscience.
Of course, they don't want that. So, in this future society, people are working on a serum or a drug, a substitute for human blood, because even the stocks of these drugs are about to run out. It all starts here.
The presentation of this coherent universe and its rules, as well as the moral ambivalence of the protagonist (played by Hawke without much power) dominates this section, which ends with the moment when a character who until then had been a secondary character breaks into the house and asks for help.
At this point, Daybreakers goes from being a very interesting apocalyptic sci-fi offering to a routine survival game that is not dull, but not particularly successful either, until a fairly strong but not entirely credible final stretch.
A hybrid of vampire and zombie movies with a somewhat weak plot resolution, Daybreakers is a big step forward for the Spyri brothers, who had tried their hand at the undead and show it here.
Taking one place and another and working with them creates a very interesting experience that also presents interesting concepts and takes care of the pacing without getting boring at (almost) any point.
Shile it fails to sustain the high expectations generated by the first third, it does make a small push towards maturity in the vampire sub-genre, which is certainly worthwhile.