Melbourne Central Hoyts, 16/02/2010
Status: Behind, and losing ground
Despite the distractions of those who offer up Speed Racer* as “research” (yes, Doug Holgate, I’m looking at you), I have managed to improve on last week’s pitiful movie attendance effort (one movie is definitely better than none movies)
From the men (boys?) who gave us the triple barreled shotgun in 2003’s Undead comes Daybreakers and vampires who don’t sparkle in the sunshine but explode when staked (and thank goodness for that).
While scripting and character development may not be writing/directing team the Speirig Brother’s strong suit, their deep love and respect for old-school horror makes for some great ideas and awesome gore.
In Daybreakers, most of us have been turned into vampires. This doesn’t mean much as people carry on their lives as usual - commuting and working downtown and whatnot. Only differences are that they are now nocturnal, have golden eyes and get takeaway blood rather than coffee on the way to the office. So far, not very interesting.
Things get complicated when the human population (now either farmed for their blood or on the run to avoid said farming) gets very very scarce. Turns out, when vampires don’t eat they turn into nice nasty old-school-bad-guy-vampires that look revolting and die messily.
ETHAN HAWKE (Gattaca) is as wet as ever as a vampire sympathetic to the human cause who teams up with human CLAUDIA KARVAN (The Big Steal), whose high-kick potential remains sadly unrealised, and accidentally cured ex-vampire WILLEM DEFOE (Spider-Man), who is hammily delightful, to created a controlled cure for vampness.
This is an Australian-funded film shot in Queensland. It’s odd, then, to see the (almost entirely) Australian cast (it’s like playing spot the Australian soap star) pretend to be American (with varying degrees of success) and the distinct Australian landscape pretend to be anywhere else. It’s jarring and I would have thought unnecessary.
The strength of the film is very much in the Speirigs’ prosthetics and corn-syrup fake blood supply. There is a lot of gore to be had here. And although some of the scares are cheaply bought, some are truly awesome. I really do appreciate when filmmakers invest in costumes, makeup and prosthetics over computer generated baddies and blood (but I wish they had spend a few cents of their CG budget fixing Hawke’s gold contact lenses when they slipped).
All in all, this is a supremely silly film, but it’s got horror where it counts.
*Have you seen Speed Racer? My head nearly exploded from the awesomeness. My faith in the Wachowskis (shattered after Matrix 2 and 3) is completely restored.
