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Vein Glorious

If you're going to make a vampire movie nowadays, you better have a gimmick. "Daybreakers", the latest in the blood-sucking genre, proposes the following twist: everyone's a vampire already. And they've all gone back to their normal routines - CEOs, advertisers, car washers, stock brokers. They're all still at it, and they're all now vampires. They even retain their 9-5 hours, thanks to a series of underground "subwalks" and tinted windows. The problem, however, is that humans are all but extinct. So, with a dwindling food supply, and no viable blood substitute on the horizon, the future is looking bleak for the vamps. It's all fairly clever and, I never thought I'd be saying this but, it works out to be a good, new vampire movie.

Much credit goes to relative newcomers Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig. The writing-directing brothers, whose previous credit is the zombie thriller "Undead", are quickly becoming the Wachowskis of the horror genre. Though "Daybreakers" is more akin to "Gattaca" than "The Matrix" - and not just because it stars Ethan Hawke.

The film is directed on the modest budget, but has style and imagination to spare. It opens with the nervy shot of a young female vampire committing suicide-by-sunrise then takes us underground where young vampire professionals (Yuvpies?) wait for the subway. Meanwhile, beneath their feet there's another layer of creature stalking about. They're called "subsiders" and they're what happens when vampires run out of blood.

Meanwhile, cheeky advertisements abound touting vampire movies, recruiting for the vampire army, and even promoting the blood-to-bean ratio in coffee shops.

At the heart of it all is Edward Dalton (Mr. Hawke) a hematologist (tee hee) working for a large pharmaceutical company headed by Sam Neill (relishing the freedom of playing a fanged one). Edward is one of those self-hating vampires that refuses to drink human blood (yawn), and he spends his time trying to find a substitute to save the threatened population. In one tongue-in-cheek shocker, Edward tries a new serum on a live subject. It, um, doesn't go well.

One day, driving home from work, Edward gets in a car wreck. The driver of the other car is - gasp! - a human! They form an uneasy bond and, over time, discover the key to the future of man and vampire-kind. I'd like to say more, but it's really best left as a surprise.

There are a lot of familiar tropes at play - the neck-biting, the "mysterious plague" that started it all - but where "Day" really breaks new ground is in finally dealing with the vampire lifecycle. If you're going to hunt your one food supply to extinction (who would do such a thing?), you're asking for trouble. And to the credit of the Spierig Brothers, they've taken the time to imagine how a world like that would look, and they're not afraid to get their hands, or the screen, dirty.

I'm as surprised as you are: for a genre populated by the undead, it appears vampire movies still have a little life left in them.