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Top Critics (26)
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DVD (7)
Daybreakers is the pinnacle of fun, modern sci-fi horror actioners.
Hawke gives his all here -- or maybe just half his all -- and it isn't quite enough: He's trying to be soulful, but he really just looks a little tired. The real delight is Willem Dafoe.
For the lowbrow, the thrill is a level of fleshy explosiveness reminiscent of David Cronenberg's Scanners. No one dies quietly; he must either detonate like Hiroshima or burst into juicy red chunks of viscera.
Daybreakers is more fun than foreboding; it's fright-lite, yet that's par for the bloody course in these busy apocalyptic days.
The narrative may flag, but the doomsday atmosphere and George Liddleâ(TM)s production design remain vivid until the final, blood-splattered reel.
Writer-directors Michael and Peter Spierig equip this unpretentious, low-budget, high-functioning shocker with some sharp satirical teeth, and Dafoe has a ball behind his Manson goatee.
It's pretty clear that directors The Spierig Brothers are ready to make their mark as a couple of high-end horror genre auteurs.
While America continues to produce interminable undead dross ... Australia can now proudly announce itself as being home to two of the best genre auteurs working today.
The is no denying that the production values of Daybreakers are superb; the sophomore directing duo fill every inch of their frame with some startling effects work and detailed production design.
A hybrid of future dystopian sci-fi and classic vampire conventions, Daybreakers is a horror movie which boasts as many ideas as it does bloodshed.
Pointed social commentary using the vampire as a metaphor for an increasingly predatory bourgeois society.
"Smartly constructed and lively all around, the gloom and doom submitted by filmmaking duo The Spierig Brothers is wildly entertaining and appropriately gushy with gore. Against all odds, Daybreakers is a blast."
Daybreakers inhabits such a richly drawn world that it's somewhere you'd like to spend more time. Unfortunately, the story isn't quite as strong as the world building.
Squandered potential at its most obvious.
Once the world is set up, the follow-through comes up short.
Somewhat enlivened by perfunctory professional performances by Ethan Hawke (as a guilt-ridden vampire looking for a cure for blood dependency) and Willem Dafoe (as Elvis, a crossbow-toting member of the human remnant).
The premise deserves a better movie, but this sleek vampire noir has an inspired twist...
... film of glistening surfaces...all lit in the subdued hues that "heaven to gaudy day denies."
When it comes to extras, there's a casket-full. There is a commentary, plus what is the most in-depth, layered and detailed Making-of documentary I've seen in ages.
Humans and parched vampires engage in endless skirmishes of hide and seek, while corporate meanies go about concocting efficient farming and drainage systems of homo sapiens in profiteering captivity.
Humans and parched vampires engage in endless skirmishes of hide and seek, while corporate meanies go about concocting efficient farming and drainage systems of homo sapiens in profiteering captivity.
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