Daybreakers Review

Rating-*

Ok ok ok. Let me start this review with a statement: no Daybreakers is not as bad as Twilight. Then again, I've never seen Twilight, and I thought Daybreakers was pretty bad. I found so many problems with it I don't know where to start. First of all, there's no explanation for how the vampire plague started, and how, if it was so rampant, did any humans survive? There's no explanation for most things in the movie. The audience has to infer everything. That's bad filmmaking.

Also, the social satire, while pretty clever, falls flat on its face with one dimensional villains. The other characters suffer the same fate. Why has character development been suddenly shafted from movies these days? Daybreakers doesn't even TRY to flesh them out. Ethan Hawke's character of Edward Dalton could have been interesting, if we knew anything about him.

Isabel Lucas, who was lauded for doing absolutely nothing in Transformers 2, also appeared. In the theater, I thought "oh! Maybe she'll actually have a part in the movie this time!" The film seemed to say "pfft. Are you kidding me? This is Daybreakers!" before tossing Lucas away like a used napkin.

The the writing and directing is convoluted and they plod along at the pace of a paraplegic tortoise. The special effects are even worse, they look like a cutscene from a ps2 game. And the action scenes, dear lord the action scenes. I should mention, these vampires conform to every myth except for super strength and speed. I guess a plague can make billions of people be invisible in mirrors but not make them smart enough to develop armor that actually blocks things.

The action scenes are shot in a bizarre way, so that they're paced incredibely slowly, and they're boring. Vampire action should not bore me. I guess the main drawing point of this movie is that the vampires are actually vampires instead of being the angsty teenagers who happen to have fangs they are in Twilight. But Dracula had super strength. Hell, even Count Orlock (look it up) had claws.

Daybreakers is also arguably Willem Dafoe's worst role. He chews the scenery so hard he swallows it. Whenever he's on screen you can't take your eyes off of him because he's delivering such stupid facial expressions and lines. It's genuinely hilarious. What else is there...? Oh yes. Terrible editing filled with jump cuts and music that will swell when characters do such exciting things as walk slowly down a hallway, only to calm down when a monster jumps out.

Unbelievably unscary and overused "boo" moments, one of the most badly done and hilarious slow-mo scenes in history, and two characters, who I genuinely liked. Both of whom are seen once or twice, then killed off in their very next scene. Hooray for token characters. Also, in the background their are tons of posters for "The Vampire Army," assumedly the most badass of badasses.

When we finally see one of these vamps, in full body armor, with a gun in hand, corner Hawke and Dafoe, he is knocked out in one punch by the skinny, malnourished, incredibley wooden, HUMAN female character. All in all, spend your vampire dollars on renting The Lost Boys or Near Dark to see real bad ass vampires, and for the love of god skip Daybreakers.