I don’t know what has happened to the vampire genre lately. Thanks to the Twilight saga, most of today’s youth seems to believe that vampires should be caring, romantic and sparkly.

Thank the heavens then, that Daybreakers has come along and put things back on track for a little while.

Written and directed by the Spierig Brothers, Daybreakers is a science fiction horror, set in the year 2019.

Due to a pandemic disease, most of humanity has turned into vampires. The unaffected humans are rounded up and put into blood farms, allowing the vampires to become the main race of society.

The problem is, with the majority of the humans captured, the blood supplies are running severely low and as a result, the vampires that are starving are also mutating into an aggressive bat like creature (called “Subsiders”), causing much concern for the established vampire authorities.

Enter Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a vampire scientist who is sympathetic towards humans and works for a pharmaceutical company that is working on finding a substitute for human blood.

As the story progresses, Edward finds himself working along side some humans in a bid find not just a solution to the Subsiders problem, but a cure to change vampires back to human. Upon meeting Elvis (Willem Dafoe), a former vampire who is now completely human, he realises that this is not just a pipe dream, but a real possibility.

Sam Neil is worthy of a mention here, as he hams it up brilliantly as the profit driven CEO of Bromley Marks, Charles Bromley. The character is both complex and tragic, and Sam Neil gives a performance that makes you hate him, yet feel sorry for him at the same time.

The production is of a good standard, with WETA providing the special effects, rarely does the film feel like a half hearted effort.

Daybreakers features a number of nice little touches that do a great job in establishing the vampire society. No better is this demonstrated than during the opening credits, where the backdrop features a number of news reports, adverts and newspaper clippings.

Overall, Daybreakers is a fairly solid horror sci-fi horror film that doesn’t hesitate to try out new ideas. It is suspenseful, horrific, tragic, action packed and original.

There are a few minor grips – some characters are not really developed enough and the story does have it’s fair share of plot holes – but it’s a film about vampires at the end of the day. Realism should be thrown out of the window when watching it.

Personally, I hope there’s going to be a sequel because this left me wanting a second helping.

It’s brilliant, bloody fun!