DAYBREAKERS 1.0**

After only 22 days into the new year, I have already found a movie for my list of “WORST MOVIES of 2010. It’s so bad that, as is true for Vampires, it should never have seen “the light of day.” So bad that many believe the NAW ( National Association of Werewolves), secretly financed the movie with the hope that it would be so bad that it would put a stake through the heart of any future Vampire movies. So bad…well you get the idea…generally it “sucks”.

It’s 2019 and the world has become inhabited almost entirely by vampires as a result of a plague that began with a single bat bite 10 years earlier. Unfortunately, the number of humans is declining rapidly since they are hunted down and harvested for blood. So that means that the food/blood supply is reaching crisis proportions for the vampires. That’s why the chief corporate supplier of blood and its derivatives is engaged in urgent research to develop a blood substitute. The need is pressing because vampires who feed on themselves turn into monstrous bat-like creatures that threaten the new order. Ethan Hawke plays Ed Dalton, a humanitarian vampire hematologist, who is desperately trying to perfect a blood substitute that could sustain vampires and spare the few remaining humans. But time and hope are running out and Ed must battle the hard-core vampires who fear that part of the cure could result in a reconversion back to being a human.

A vampire movie needn’t be illuminating or amusing…most aren’t. But it should be interesting, and this one-----despite all the chases, fights and blood and gore---- simply isn’t; and, worst of all, it is NOT SCARY …now how bad is that. Furthermore, there is no emotional charge and you find it difficult to root for anyone other than yourself in the hopes making it to the end of the movie without going to sleep…and you don’t want to be asleep when vampires are around !!

Why Ethan Hawke, Sam Neil and William Dafoe signed on for this movie I don’t know unless it was for a big pay-off at the bank…or maybe I should say the “blood-bank”. Neil is a hardcore vampire who has no use for humans except for their blood.; Hawke is a vampire who likes humans and would like to be one again; and Dafoe is a human who used to be a vampire but was reconverted to a human…confused, don’t be; just don’t see it.

My advice… if you’re into vampire stories, skip this one altogether and, instead, go see or rent one of the “Twilight” films for the romantic spin, or watch rent or watch TV’s HBO series “ True Blood” for an interesting story of modern day vampires, both good and bad ones, mixed in with heavy romance.

Clark