"Ow!"Daybreakers is clearly a labour of love for the Spierig brothers, as witnessed by the exhaustive 'Making Of...' on the DVD which runs almost as long as the movie. The film looks polished with gleaming visuals and real attention to detail which effectively creates this alternate existence where vampirism rules. Sam Neill, Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe provide genuine credibility and gravitas, with a good turn by Michael Dorman as Hawke's conflicted brother - it is worth noting that female roles are scant and underwritten throughout - and Daybreakers is a sombre and serious attempt to give the vampire genre some dramatic weight which the Twilight franchise has taken away. There are some gleeful moments of splatter, notably in the early experiment scene with synthetic blood and also a couple of Day Of The Dead-style demises towards the end. The narrative becomes somewhat haphazard in the final half-hour, and overall this movie does not come close to the mythical and emotional punch of Near Dark, but Daybreakers is efficiently made and told and is to be credited for giving movie vampires back some, er, bite.
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