With films like Daybreakers, I’ve noticed a trend that they tend to take themselves too seriously.  Luckily Daybreakers realizes that it is silly and over the top.  Vampires are creatures that are no longer strictly for horror.  Since Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and the Blade trilogy vampires have successfully crossed over into comedy and action films.  Daybreakers is a clever conglomeration of both.

From the onset of the film, I was not sure whether or not this would be pretentious and unaware of its own ridiculousness.  It opens with a vampire using the sun to commit suicide.  The quick cuts, used to splice footage of sentences from her suicide note and the actual act of suicide, are so fast that it becomes funny.  I’m certain that this is intended to be taken seriously, but ironically sets the proper tone for the film whose concept is over the top.  Part of the reason that vampires are frightening is that they were mysterious.  But in Daybreakers that trope is impossible considering that the world is primarily inhabited by vampires.

I was surprised by Ethan Hawke.  The last movie I saw of his, in which I liked his performance, was The Dead Poet’s Society.  Unfortunately this actor is not suited for action hero roles.  Strangely this doesn’t stop him from being cast as the action hero type.  He has softer features, and personality than the traditional action star.  Hawke is well suited to play Edward Dalton in Daybreakers.  Dalton is a scientist.  He’s not intended to be a tough guy.  The action scenes in which he is involved allow for him to build the courage, and strength that a person in his position could build should he rise to the occasion.  He’s not a seasoned fighter, and he’s not supposed to be one.  That’s why it works.

The successful comedy in the film is driven by the absurdities of vampire society.  I can sum this up with two words:  vampire animals, specifically, but not limited to, a chimpanzee.  The unsuccessful comedy is most of Willem Dafoe’s dialogue.

Since Daybreakers isn’t strictly comedic, I have to mention the action scenes.  The action was successfully exciting, but usually felt sudden and forced into the film.  As Captain Logan said after we saw Daybreakers, the reason that the action scenes worked for the film was that the rules of the universe were used.  The car chases could have been simple chases scenes, but they managed to include the vampire mythos in the scenes.  Personally I think they should have spent more time on the subplot, than the largely forced action scenes.  The subplot was not ignored, but it wasn’t explored to the detailed scope to which it could have been explored.

Willem Dafoe’s characterization was the most disappointing aspect of the film.  Dafoe plays a good ol’ boy, and uses a barely convincing accent to match the intention.  It makes sense that his character would be a little country, but it plays into the stereotype of the grease monkey.  Dafoe would have used his own voice, and his performance would have been stronger for it.  Dafoe’s performance as Lionel ‘Elvis’ Cormac was adequate.  Although the film is largely successful in its creative endeavor, the blame for Dafoe’s character falls on the writer and director.  Cormac’s lines were intentionally comedic and were forced into the film like the action.  I think that at some point someone thought that the clever comedy in the film was not enough, and decided that they needed more blatantly presented humor.  It flows against the established tone, and wasn’t needed.  But then again, maybe the lines wouldn’t have been so problematic if Dafoe was allowed to be himself.

The Verdict:  I’ll give Daybreakers a 3 out of 5.  It has everything it needs to be funny and exciting, but it fell into the pitfalls of ignoring the potential of the subplot, and underestimating the worth of its own comedy.

*Minor Spoilers*

When I saw the first trailers for District 9, I thought it looked preachy and unentertaining, but you can never be sure of anything from an ad, and after Entertainment Weekly raved about the film last week, I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, I was disappointed; it was exactly like I had expected from those initial trailers.

District 9 is a film with really one goal in mind: use a story about survivors from a stranded alien craft as a metaphor for racism and classism. First, let me say that I’m always suspicious of a film, especially a science fiction film, with a big agenda like this. I think movies should be about characters, and although I appreciate social commentary or a moral lesson in a story, those things should be secondary to the people involved. I don’t have to like a protagonist, but if I don’t care about him, have some kind of respect for him, the moral of the story seems like nothing more than an agenda to me. This seems like a movie that only exists to make us think about how we treat “undesirables” in our society. It’s a hard look at slum life, and I appreciate that this is a huge problem in our world. But if you’re going to make a movie about the slum world, I don’t think you should populate that world with extraterrestrials, throw some alien technology in, and call it a science fiction film. At least, not unless the main character is someone I care to watch for two hours.

Wikus is our protagonist, and his job is to serve the insect-like aliens eviction notices. In documentary-fashion, we see him going to the slums in South Africa, where the aliens have been living since they were stranded twenty years ago. Wikus doesn’t seem to see these creatures as much more than animals, regardless of the fact that they have sophisticated weapons and space travel technology. He seems to enjoy seeing them hurt or killed, as we see in a scene where he burns up a bunch of unhatched alien eggs. We’re really given no reason as to why he’s so inhumane and racist against them, other than the fact that the film wants to show us how people can be to those weaker and poorer than they are, and to those they don’t understand. Okay, fine, but don’t just say that’s the way people are– give him a back story, some concrete reason he’s the way he is, and I’ll buy it.

Wikus is a jerk, and he’s not even very good at his job. We’re supposed to start feeling bad for him, I suppose, when he spills a strange liquid on himself that makes him start to mutate into one of the aliens. The problem is that he’s been made into such a pethetic, and I think, unplausible character that I don’t care when he gets sick and starts throwing up everywhere. I hate seeing a character throw up on screen, but I especially hate it when I’m already wishing he would die.

Eventually, he’s redeemed, but it comes too late in the film. He’s forced into exhile after he escapes from government facility trying to do tests on him (now that he’s part-alien, he can use their technology, which the humans haven’t been able to do because it only works with their DNA) and lives with the other aliens in the slums for a while, and there he “befriends” one of the aliens, but only because that alien says he can make Wikus completely human again if he gets more of the ooze he spilled on himself earlier. Wikus makes a lot of really dumb, selfish choices, and I can’t help but feel like he deserves all the brutal, gross misery that comes to him. He finally makes a good choice in the end, but it seems to me like most of what happens to him could have been avoided if he was less of an idiot.

Most critics are raving about this film, and they’d probably tell me I just don’t get it. Yes, it’s an extremely well-made film. Yes, the actual science-fiction stuff in it about the aliens, how their technology works, and Wikus living as a half-human half-alien is really great. Yes, it looks fantastic, and the parts of it that are pretending to be a documentary look like a real documentary. The problem is, I didn’t enjoy myself at all. I fought gag reflexes, I turned my head,  I cringed, and I thought about leaving, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because it was completely disgusting. And all of that may have been worth it if there was a single person (besides one alien and his little kid) in the film to latch onto.

I also just didn’t buy the premise. The aliens are supposed to be an allegory for slum and homeless life, but I don’t see how they could have gotten into this predicament. They’re several times stronger than humans, and even though they can’t get to their mother ship, they have tons of working weapons that are far more sophisticated than anything on Earth. We see those weapons used several times in the film, including a mech suit, and I couldn’t help but wonder why the humans were depicted as being stronger than the aliens. And it isn’t because they’re passive aliens, not with those weapons.

And the conceit of it being a documentary was dropped fifteen minutes into the film. I was really on board with it when I thought the whole thing was going to be in documentary style– we see several interviews with various professionals and locals giving their opinions and observations about the situation, and we follow Wikus into the slums, all just like a documentary, until there’s suddenly a camera in a place it couldn’t possibly be: inside an alien house, while they’re obviously having a conversation they wouldn’t be having if there was a camera there. I thought maybe there would be some explanation for this, but instead, the documentary idea was dropped completely until the last ten or fifteen minutes of the film, and it started being edited like a regular film narrative, except the film quality was still documentary-esque.

The film does have a very strong third act, and the final scene is classic science fiction. I suppose I should be disappointed that the climax is a big shoot-out, but I was ready for action to break up the constant stream of disgusting sequences of throwing up, torture, limbs being chopped off, and other things I won’t even mention. I guess I don’t understand why a film can’t be fun to watch while simultaneously giving social commentary. It just wasn’t subtle enough for me– I felt like I got the entire social message from the trailers, and ultimately, all I was really left with after two hours was that same message.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan