Feed the bats! Tuppence a bag! [Review: Daybreakers]

Daybreakers is all about the vampire gags.

It's the near future, a few years after a vampire virus apocalypse, and Daybreakers takes every opportunity to show you how they have adapted the world around them: they drink tea with blood, they've adapted their cars and buildings to shield them during the daytime, they have an army equipped with daytime armour and tranq guns that hunts down humans for blood, and so on. I'm not sure how a vampirism virus would actually make you invisible in your wing mirror but the DoP within me loves the shot so I'll let it pass.

The plot itself is pretty good - the vampires are still unused to their sudden ascendance and have ambiguous feelings about it, embodied in the two brothers, one a grunt in the human-hunting army who seems content with the way humans are treated, the other a haematologist who tolerates the situation as a temporary measure but has many regrets. The plot develops along similar lines to Stephenie Meyer's The Host, with the haematologist on the run from his own kind and living with a band of rebel humans who don't quite trust him. Some of the ideas about possible cures for vampirism are a bit convoluted and illogical but, on the other hand, they lend themselves to a brutal twist in the ending.

The main vampire gag is the blood bank which features heavily in the plot. Humans are stored suspended in a giant vault and milked like cows - but the bank looks and runs like a city bank, and when the world's blood supply begins to run low, investors start removing their "investments" triggering the best cinematic banking confidence crisis since Michael Banks decided to cash in his stock options and feed the pigeons.

The film was produced by Australian twins Michael and Peter Spierig, whose previous films include Undead and the acclaimed short The Big Picture. I noticed the twins have given themselves a credit for the effects as well as for writing, producing, directing, etc. Pat on the back - the effects are definitely a high point of the film, including plenty of David Cronenberg-style blood and gore as well as architecture and landscape that tells a lot of the story.

Overall Daybreakers is stylish and witty. It sometimes relies too much on sudden, contrived B-movie scares but when it rises above this the original ideas really shine through.

Last orders at the blood bank [Review: Thirst]

Thirst (Bakjwi) is a Korean vampire movie directed by Chan-Wook Park and starring Kang-ho Song and Ok-vin Kim. I must be straight with you: due to circumstances beyond my control (and unrelated to the movie) I’ve only seen ¾ of Thirst so cannot comment on the ending.

Sang-hyeon is a priest who becomes a vampire when he is given a vampire blood transfusion while volunteering for a religious virology research project. OK so far? Fresh blood removes his infectious blisters and heals any injuries including those from his self-flagellation. Like Eli in Let The Right One In, Sang-hyeon has a doting father who is willing to let him drink from his veins - he also has access to blood from comatose victims. However his thirst is not only for blood, and this leads him to become involved with Tae-joo, a Cinderella-like figure severely abused by her husband and mother-in-law.

Thirst is, as I'd hoped, a proper adult vampire movie. It is about love - and lust - but it doesn't hold back from the brutal or alien aspects of the situation and is far removed from any teenage will-they-won’t-they drama. It's also about the nature of right and wrong - not the black and white opposites themselves but the path that leads from one to the other.

The film is long but very watchable. There's a lot of beautiful camerawork. The dialogue is moving although occasionally clumsy. Having horrified Tae-joo and scared her away by demonstrating his nature, SH confronts her in her bathroom and pleads with her to accept him in an extremely memorable, riveting scene – while SH’s outbursts are unintentionally comic “Do you think I could have slept with you if I was only a priest?” etc., her terror at being trapped in a nightmarish situation is clear and very moving.

Software hamster? Afar mother stews?

"I am completely operational, and all my circuits are functioning perfectly" - H.A.L. 9000

The shape of things to come: any, all, some or none of the following stories will be featured in subsequent Sci-Fi Gene posts.

Doctor Who returns to TV this weekend in "The Waters Of Mars" (anagram). It's about time, as I think it's now traditional to say whenever a long-awaited Doctor Who project finally gets broadcast. Anyway, here's the "I don't hear anyone knocking" trailer.



After seeing Let The Right One In I've re-acquired a taste for vampire movies. I saw Thirst last week - full review to follow - and I'm also looking forward to Daybreakers. Vampires are the new zombies...

While it still needs some fine tuning, I managed to get this chromakey shot to work. This effect will be needed in my next film project, which is slowly coming together - more on that story later.

Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fight Choreographer [Review: Blood: The Last Vampire]

The idea of a vampire film with the choreography of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon makes sense to me and I've been waiting a long time to see such a film. I'm still waiting. Blood: The Last Vampire is an enjoyable film in its own right and has a lot to recommend it but suffers from this particular comparison.

Blood is a very international movie. Set in Japan and filmed in Japanese and English, it brings together the considerable talents of French director Chris Nahon, South Korean, American-Italian and Japanese actresses Gianna Jun, Allison Miller and Koyuki, and Hong Kong producer William Kong who also produced on Crouching Tiger.

The three female leads are superb and each brings a different quality to their character: Gianna Jun has an alien beauty and is completely convincing as the vengeance-driven, unstoppable halfling Saya - I had no trouble believing that, were she not supplied with fresh blood by the mysterious Council this character would kill without hesitation to survive; Allison Miller's character Alice remains terrified by the paranormal world she has been drawn into - and significantly, despite learning to trust Saya, does not conquer this terror. Koyuki is suitably eerie as Onigen. Male supporting roles are less convincing although this may be about the plot rather than acting per se - this is not a film about men.

The fight scenes are O.K. but given producer William Kong's oversight should have been far better. The genius of Crouching Tiger was to make slightly impossible moves in early scenes, such as running up walls or flying from rooftop to rooftop, credible - the suspension of disbelief then continues through most of the movie even as the stunts get sillier. This kind of credibility is needed in Blood, particularly for the scenes where Saya faces down large numbers of enemies single-handed while defending petrified Alice. These scenes are exciting but not always convincing, and there's a tendency to speed up or slow down the footage that just confuses the action further.

And I know it's a long happy tradition but surely by now evil henchmen have realised that if you outnumber the hero 50 to 1, you kind of lose the advantage if you line up and take turns to fight them one to one.

On the plus side, there's a point where Alice revives Saya, Little Shop Of Horrors-style, that could have been extremely silly - it's a measure of the excellent general direction that the intensity is maintained even during scenes like this.

Vampires vs Cats [Review: Let The Right One In]

Let The Right One In is a superb, nightmarish Swedish vampire film based on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It's the story of the friendship between Oskar, age 12, and Eli, who has been 12 for rather longer than Oskar.

Oskar is effeminate and perhaps a little autistic, and fantasises about killing his school bullies. His school also seems to have serial killer psychology on the year 8 curriculum. Eli is both powerful and innocent; her treatment of her doting father is particularly chilling, yet perhaps because she and her father really do carry out some quite gory acts, her moments of guilt and insight ring true. In general Eli's character is particularly well thought out and she really does think and act like a 12 year old might in the circumstances.

The film is set amongst harsh landscapes in which light and dark spaces are equally creepy, a little like Insomnia, and the plot is just as harsh and uncompromising. Oskar and Eli are played by Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson, both give utterly convincing, intense and unworldly performances.

In one sense this is a traditional vampire film - there's no real deviation from the accumulated vampire mythology. However the portrayal is also thoughtful and inventive. Some aspects, such as fangs or the power of flight, are never shown on-screen but are cleverly implied; and the film actually provides answers to some important vampire questions:

1. What happens when a vampire eats pic-n-mix sweets - it's grim.
2. What happens if you don't invite one in but she comes in anyway - grimmer.
3. Who would win in a fight between a vampire and a houseful of cats - that's a bet I would have won.