This unorthodox vampire flick starts with a flourish but ends with a fizzle. Daybreakers boasts a clever, science fiction-adjacent concept, a game cast, and some welcome humor, yet about halfway through it suffers a crisis of faith and stops believing in the validity of its own premise. In its blind terror, the film collapses into a standard-issue gorefest, the kind of thing you’d pay money not to see. In short, like its own blood-starved vampires, Daybreakers reverts to a primitive, unreasoning version of itself.

But the first forty minutes, before the panic attack, are damn good.

One option, I suppose, would be to watch to that point, then leave, hit a nearby pub with your buddies, and invent a good ending over a pitcher of beer. Trust me, your finish would be better than the one on-screen.

The year is 2019. Non-supernatural vampires have taken over the world. Humanity, hunted to the verge of extinction, exists only in small pockets out in the wilderness. Blood supplies are running low. The yield from captive human blood farms no longer meets global demand. Attempts by Big Pharma hematologist (and reluctant vampire) Edward Dalton to produce a viable blood substitute have so far failed. Perhaps even more alarming than that, a deadly new scourge has emerged. As the vampires starve, they devolve into mindless, bat-like creatures willing to feed on anything – humans, vampires, even themselves. Already the larger cities are seeing major infestations of these monstrosities. The situation is dire.

A chance encounter with a band of humans on the run through the hills changes everything for Dalton. Through them, he learns of a startling development outside the city. The future, it seems, might not be as bleak as he supposes.

That is, all things considered, a fascinating opening. Ethan Hawke, with his trademark cadaverous, chain-smoking innocence, is dead-right, if you will, as Dalton. Tormented by what he has become. Searching for answers that remain just beyond his grasp. Australian actress Claudia Karvan, known mostly for her television work Down Under, brings a tough but weary resilience to her role as Audrey, leader of the renegade humans. And the peerless Willem Dafoe, one of the few actors on the market whose natural looks are more chilling than any vampire’s, is a hoot and a half as Lionel “Elvis” Cormac, a blue-collar Joe with a whopper of a secret to share.

The film’s early focus on the mordantly amusing quotidian details of modern vampire living is truly inspired, cars rigged for “day driving,” armored shutters on houses, automated neighborhood loudspeakers announcing the time left until sunrise, diners that offer blood-laced coffee.

But after tantalizing us with this splendid lead-in, writer/director brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (2003's micro-hit Undead) stumble. The film abandons its crisp, semi-parodic style and shifts to nuance-free carnage-mode. Several key ideas presented at the outset, like the blood-starved sub-vampires, are abandoned in favor of a plodding march through knee-deep entrails to an uncertain but “hopeful” conclusion.

Ninety-eight minutes of TV series-grade cinematography by Ben Nott (Salem’s Lot) do little to help.

One further saving grace, though, is the elegant score by Christopher Gordon (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World). Its dark and remote Overture sounds like a largo composed by an actual vampire. Cold and deadly on the inside yet refined and graceful on the outside.

Bottom line?

Daybreakers is an ambitious film that unfortunately outruns its own vision. However, for the already vampirically inclined, the film’s above-average first half probably justifies a matinee viewing.

Daybreakers
Lionsgate Films
U.S. Release Date: January 8, 2010
Directors: Michael and Peter Spierig
Screen writers: Michael and Peter Spierig
Running Time: 98 minutes