Movie Review: Daybreakers
Yup, I know this is not a very recent movie though it is still airing in SG, probably closing real soon too.... Have been thinking of watching either Daybreakers or Legion. But almost all of my friends has watched Legion and they hated it. So yup, decided on Daybreakers instead.
Anyway, caught the Valentine's Day (did i get the name wrong?) movie trailer and I can't wait to watch it! Soooooooooooo many actors and actresses are inside! Even Julia Roberts with Emma Roberts!
Emma's scene in the trailer: I'm supposed to have sex with Alex today!
First thought that popped into my mind: Alex Pettyfer? LOL
The Taylor+Taylor scene is so cute too!
Okay nevermind, back to the review. Oh no, about my choice to poster first. I wanted to put up the poster that my local cinemas has, it was the one with the human blood farming equipment whereby many naked human bodies are housed in small machines to suck out their blood until they eventually die. But I can't find it anywhere. =(
This movie is kind of like a futuristic movie, whereby the majority of the human population was hit by this outbreak of something, totally not explained anywhere in the movie, creating a new world with vampires as the majority and poor humans as the minority AKA their only source of food. Streets are even more deserted than the most unearthly hours as vampires burns to ashes under sunlight and busy roads becomes school zone period at 2am in the morning. Coffee kiosks sells coffee, not with sugar and creamer but 20% human blood, later on in the movie at 5% due to shortage of blood as humans are slowly becoming extinct. The poors starved and some ended up self-feeding on their own blood, and the result was a new species of blood hungry monsters without much thinking and speaking abilities, and looked alot like a man-bat hybrid gone wrong.
Ethan Hawke plays Edward, a Hermatologist, who is also a vampire but he simply refused to drink human blood. Of course, he was once a human, that's why. Thus, he spent his effort working at a human blood farming company owned by Bromley, trying to come up with a blood substitute such that the humanity may be saved. The substitute also needs to be safe for comsumption such that the consumer won't explode and be reduced to a mass of bloody goo. His brother, Frankie, works for the military and spent his nights hunting down the last few humans for farming purposes.
Edward then bumped into a group of humans on the run, and somehow he managed to gain their trust and that's how the entire plot really unfolds. Admist the humans was a once-vampire, Elvis, having been cured from the outbreak during a freak accident that involves direct contact with sunlight (such that they'll catch fire and burn) and then water (to put out the fire before they're reduced to ashes). Wishing to gain back his humanity, Edward went on with his pilot-project with Elvis's theory, using mirrors, sunlight, wet blanket, and... vacuum. And he succeeded, albeit after many tries. And the plot further unfolds with more running and hiding from the human trio, and more hunting from Frankie and his military comrades.
Another scene/plot worth mentioning in my opinion is that Bromley finally manage to catch his human daughter who sees him as a blood-sucking monster instead of her father, and refused to be changed. Bromley then got Frankie to force the change on her. The scene whereby she was self-feeding (because she refused to drink her human blood ration) and going crazy on Bromley was rather disturbing. So was the scene whereby she was already half transformed into the man-bat hybrid, and chained to the military jeep along with many other hybrids and forced to walk out into the sunlight and burnt, as human blood supplies are running dangerously low and they rest of the vampire community felt that those hybrids are better off dead. See Bromley, happy with that? You're daughter had to be forcefully burnt to ashes because of you!
Anyway this incident got Frankie so traumatised that he too, started to have second thoughts on Edward's stand towards protecting humanity. However, being starved of human blood for too long (Bromley probably kept all the remaining blood supplies for himself), he lost control and fed on Elvis, a once-vampire. That's how a second cure was found. Vampires do not need to get burnt by sunlight before putting the fire out by water to change back to humans. The blood of a vampire turned human will somehow be mutated and change the vampire who fed on the blood to change back to a human himself. Knowing this fact, Edward went to Bromley and tricked him into biting him, thus changing him back to human, before tying him up on a chair and throwing him out into the group of blood-hungry army troops. That scene was still not so bad as the soldiers merely tore Bromley up into pieces and fed on him. (Cringing already? The next scene is worst)
Somehow Edward, Frankie and gang were also surrounded by another troop of hungry vampire soldiers and in order to save his brother, Frankie gave up and sacrificed himself. This scene was really a little too much for me as a handful of soldiers first pounced onto Frankie and literally ate him up, only to be changed back to humans, AKA food for the next handful of vampire soldiers, and the chain goes on until the last group of vampires got changed back to humans, with bits of body parts lying here and there.
yes, EEW~! And this also pretty much marked the end of the movie.
During the final gory scene, i really felt nauseous. It was then that I realised that I can take more gory scenes of people cutting up another human, but not humans eating each other up. I mean, yeah, they're supposed to be vampires, but they still look pretty much like any other humans, yeah? Utterly grossed out by that idea.
My friend also commented saying, why don't they capture the vampires and like, line them up along the lake and letting them burn for a while before pushing them into the water (That was how Elvis changed back btw) instead of like, eating each other up? -LOL-
So yup, in my opinion, Daybreakers is not really a very worth watching movie. Though I feel that they've really planned out the setting of a vampire-infested world quite well.