Daybreakers

The trailer for Daybreakers intrigued me. I've never seen anything to do with vampires before where they have been anything other than a secret minority preying on humans. This has been done very well and sometimes done very very badly. But anything that bucks this trend has to be worth a look, right?

Well, in the world of Daybreakers, humans make up less than 5% of the population. The population of what, we're never told but it's assumed they mean the world. The problem with this is obvious, there's not enough blood to go around.

I'll get the actual film out of the way quite quickly: It's not very good. Other than the nice premise it lacks any real soul. It's too slow, the acting is... pretty dodgy and the plot isn't as clever as it thinks it is. It's not exactly bad but it's definitely not something you should go out of your way to see. In my opinion.

I still find myself intrigued by the concept though. Sadly, it's not really a concept that can stand up to extended viewing.

Vampires taking their place in society *can* work. That whole tension was one of the only good things about True Blood (which I think was fantastic, apart from the main characters, who were universally uninteresting) but when the blood starts running out...

Well, let me tell you what would happen if the blood started running out.

If the entire world (or 95% of the real world) has turned into vampires, there would be nothing to be done. Other than use animal blood but that's besides the point.

I think, though, things would never get that far. Let's say, for example. there's an outbreak in America or Russia or China or any of the countries that are slightly dubious about the research they conduct with viruses or biological warfare or whatever. The point there is all of those countries are industrialised.

If the virus spreads to the point where people at the top of the various pyramids get infected, you know what will happen? They'll control the spread of the infection. But not in the way you're thinking.

They'll control it so it doesn't spread outside the industrialised countries. The vampires in Daybreakers are thinking but amoral individuals who chose who they feed on and, therefore, infect.

So what would they do? They'd leave Africa untouched, as well as the other fucked up bits of the world. They would, essentially, do what they've been doing for the last 500 years - fucking over bits of the world that are less fortunate than them for their own gain.

There would undoubtedly be vampires in these countries but they'd be the ones in the government or in organised crime, involved in trafficking.

What I'm essentially saying is:

Imagine the scene. The president of the US, congress and the senate meet. They discuss distributing the virus to Africa.

"Shall we spread the joy of imortality?"
"What? For free?"

I may sound like I'm banging this drum pretty hard but I can't help but think this would have been a much more interesting film if it was set in a country which has much more ethnic tension than the USA - South Africa would be good, Australia would be interesting. The problem is, films in America tend to be about America and... they tend to kind of assume that the rest of the world is behaving more or less like they are. Which is just plain wrong.

But yes, once I'd thought of that I couldn't even enjoy the premise.

Ah well.