Daybreakers Geoff Klein

With all its futuristic, big-brother-is-watching-you, big corporations ruling the world vibe going on this feels like the kind of vampire flick that Philip K. Dick would have scripted.

We're a million miles away from the more normal sinister/seductive mix you get in most modern vampire films/books and further yet from the Christopher Lee style brooding nobility menace of the Hammer House of Horror days.

Ethan Hawke is a scientist. In a future where the vampires rule and the dwindling numbers of humans means blood is in serious short supply, his job is to create a blood substitute - and before the growing unrest in the vamp population turns really ugly.

He is also the perfect person (sorry, blood-sucking fiend) for the human resistance. He is a reluctant vampire, sorry for the people his kind are killing. When the resistance contacts him, telling him there is a cure, he is only too eager to help.

This is a high-action science fiction about vampires. Now that may sound like a disaster in the making, a senseless mixing of genres, but it works. It has a cast of top acting talent (Hawke being joined by Willem Dafoe, Isabel Lucas and Sam Neill). It has a plot that actually has an intelligent premise and mixes in some of our world's concerns over finite resources. And it has some serious effects - without their being over-the-top and stealing the show.

This is top quality stuff.

Page updated 18 July, 2010