Today my parents went to see Avatar in 3D and I was tasked with finding something else to do for three hours in zero-degree Mason City, IA. My choices were as follows:
1. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
2. The Blind Side
3. Extraordinary Measures
4. Legion
5. Sherlock Holmes
6. The Book of Eli
7. The Lovely Bones
8. The Spy Next Door
9. The Tooth Fairy
10. Avatar 3D
11. Daybreakers
12. The Blind Side
First, options five, six, seven, and, obviously, ten were eliminated by reason of prior viewing. Option one was no good: not without friends, intoxicants or a remote control. I felt the same way about option nine, though perhaps without cause. Likewise with the inspirational weepy options, two and three. It ended up being a toss-up between Legion, the Paul Bettany as violent angel action-pocalypse, and Daybreakers, another fucking movie about vampires starring two really vampiry fellas, Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe! I was very conflicted, but eventually decided against my gut and with Roger Ebert, who seemed to think there was at least something to say about Daybreakers.
I saw Daybreakers in an otherwise completely empty theatre, which allowed me to lay down over several seats, walk around, pace and otherwise amuse myself during the film. At first, the movie was cheesy in what I decided might be described adequately enough as a Boondock Saints manner. It had an over-the-top quality that made the dialog and much of the acting absurd. This combined with an abundance of creaky cgi effects that resembled something out of the late 90's and initially made me quite wary of the movie in general, though the titles were of the three dimensional, embedded style that is so 21st century. Luckily, the punchline of the movie involves a cool explanation of the nature of the whole vampirification/de-vampirification system. Also, we get to find out what happens when vampires starve, and that's vaguely interesting. Without giving away too much, all I can say is that cruising around in daylight-driving enabled cars and firing tiny wooden stakes with automatic crossbows really worked for me in this film, I was absorbed. It almost felt like a movie made ten or fifteen years ago that I'd just never seen before. Oh, and Sam Neil brings his lovable evil side as well.
See this movie. Yes, it is another movie about vampires, but I feel like everybody should always take the opportunity to see gigantic rendered images of humans as farmed, fleshy, matter-converters.
