I love vampire movies. I mean love them. I am not a crazy, obsessed vampire fanatic but I love the genre. Whenever I come across The Lost Boys I stop it and I watch it. Part of that is my completely unexplainable love for Kiefer Sutherland. I don’t know why but I’d love it if Jack Bauer would head-butt me. Strange right?
Anyway, I love vampires. Everyone says that vampires are hip and trendy right now but that is far from the truth. Those things in the movies and on television right now are not vampires. Twilight has ruined vampires. The Vampire Diaries and The Vampire’s Assistant, crap like that have pissed all over the genre. Twilight is nothing more than a bunch of kids playing dress up.
Vampires don’t sparkle. That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life and this is coming from an American that lived through eight years of George Bush. Let me tell you something about a vampire. A vampire will have crazy, freaky sex with you and then suck the blood from your exhausted corpse. That is a vampire. Edward is a pansy. I want so badly to spout a string of expletives but I’d like to keep this blog at least PG-13.
Seriously though vampires don’t sparkle.
Having said that, when I saw the preview for Daybreakers I thought we might be able to return to the heyday of vampire films. I thought maybe Twilight was good for something. Maybe it had encouraged studios to greenlight a vampire movie that might not get much attention otherwise.
It has been a while since America made a good vampire movie. Our last one was 2007’s 30 Days of Night. I know you’re all shaking your head because Josh Hartnett was in it, but take my word for it, that was a great vampire movie. But it is nothing compared to Let the Right One In. It’s a Swedish film from 2008. If you like vampire movies then you need to go out right now and rent it. (It’s on instant on Netflix right now too. Make sure it isn’t dubbed before you watch it.)
If you don’t get it tonight then just make sure you watch it before Matt Reeves, the director of Cloverfield ruins it with his remake this October.
I’ve lost total control of this blog. It’s just that I love vampires. Sadly Daybreakers was not America’s reclamation of the vampire genre. Sadly, all that will happen is push more people towards the Twilight series.
Daybreakers is about a world of vampires facing a blood shortage. It’s 2019 and the entire world has converted to vampires after a German bat caused a global epidemic. (Of course it’s the Germans that are to blame.) Only 5% of the human population remains and they are being hunted to extinction. Edward (I know ridiculous right?), Ethan Hawke, is the chief hematologist for the largest blood company in the world and his attempts to create a blood substitute have failed. Edward was turned to vampirism against his will and he’s one of the few that still hold on to their humanity. Edward falls in with humans who have a cure and need Edward’s help to share it with the world.
The movie started off so well. The Spierig Brothers created a believable future. Well a believable future where the whole world is made up of vampires. It seemed like a great allegory for our global problems now. In the world of Daybreakers, the third world is struggling with blood shortages. The rich are able to afford good blood while the poor suffer and of course global industries control access to the most essential goods. Everything was in place for a great vampire movie.
Sadly, no one in the damn movie can act. It’s as if they knew they had Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill, so why bother spending any time on casting after that. I think they just announced a casting call and as people arrived they assigned them a role. They didn’t have them audition or anything. Oh and the music sounded just like something included under Generic Horror Sounds in Garage Band on a new MacBook Pro.
But alas, all hope was not lost, because there was some vampire gore. Heads were removed. Actually heads were ripped from their shoulders. So that was great to see. It was only a brief abatement thought, because the saddest part of all: no vampire seductions. That I don’t understand.
Dracula was so sexual and I always thought that vampires would hump anything. So a world of vampires seemed like the perfect opportunity for a global orgy. Sadly no one got laid in this one. Hell even the Edward from Twilight got laid. But then again that was statutory rape, so that doesn’t count either.
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