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Canwest News Service
Filmmaking is a collaborative art, so why isn't film reviewing? Each week in this space, experts, artists and paying movie customers come together to take apart a recent release. It's salty. It's full of hot air. It's the Popcorn Panel.
This week's panel – Alison Broverman is an arts reporter who generally stays out of the sun. – Peter Kuling is a film professor researching cures for bad movies. – Mike Kiss is a television writer who thinks too many stories suck and/or bite.
This week's film
Daybreakers
Alison Man, was this movie ever gross. I suppose that's appropriate for an apocalyptic film about blood-thirsty viral vampires, and at least it's gross in a bloody, emaciated, screaming bat-people way and not in a mushy, sparkly, Twilight way. Gore aside, there were too many plot holes in Daybreakers for the film to fulfill the potential of its premise. Kudos, however, for casting the two most naturally vampiric-looking actors in Hollywood: Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe.
Peter The grossness came from the Speirig brothers' interest in viral monsters. Their only other feature film, 2001's Undead, features a zombie virus story with a potential cure. But this isn't an action movie, it's more like a medical experiment horror film. Did anyone else feel that Hawke's role as Edward the hematologist seemed like a parody of Twilight's Edward? Hawke did a great job of lamenting his vampiric state but I loved Sam Neill's Wall Street-inspired character. A corporate vampire with evil financial goals was one of the touches helping this film create a realistic futuristic world despite the sheer fantasy of its plot.
Mike I didn't connect with any realism in this film. We couldn't build a subway extension in the time it took these folks to link every home in their city with a system of underground tunnels. I especially love how no one feels a link to "the humans" even though they've only been infected for a few years. It took me about six years of living here to start saying I was from Toronto. It would take more than nine for me to stop calling myself human. The biggest thing for me was the film's moral tone. If you've got that many vampires, then the new infection is humanity. Eat them and stay inside.
Alison As if some Buffy wannabe wouldn't show up at the first signs of vampire infestation and promptly dispatch them all. How could they possibly have found the time — in nine years — to restructure society so completely in the midst of that kind of outbreak? I did like Neill's sinister CEO, and bought that becoming a vampire was the best thing that ever happened to him. Despite the bureaucratic impossibility of the basic premise, Daybreakers is at its best when detailing the ins and outs of vamp life. The tongue-in-cheek commercials were the most enjoyable part of the film.
Mike This movie was sold to me making good use of crazy, screeching, clawing, fighting supervampires. And all we get in the movie is a home invasion. Weak. And the cure for vampirism left me with my strongest "Are you kidding me?" since Signs. I will say that I did enjoy the portrayal of vampire life, though. Still, the sloppy script missed a few chances to come to an interesting conclusion.
Al ison No kidding, and Dafoe's heavy-handed voice-over at the end was laughable. Are the writers really that dumb, or do they just think we are?
Mike I loved the feeding frenzy with all the soldiers near the end. I was hoping for a kind of "Oh, crap, what did we do?" Nope. Movies like this should be easy to write, and this one was too messy. No excuses, in my book. I was looking for an action film, and not a pharmaceutical thriller, and I thought the film was misrepresented. The trailer sold me on creepy and intense. Didn't get much of that. Crazy batguys? No problem. We'll just collar them and drag them into the sun.
Peter I guess I'm just the right kind of dumb that this movie was hoping for. I liked the inclusion of a vampirism cure. The opening with the suicidal young vampire also was something I'd never seen before. Screenplay and performances aside, I was floored by the intense lighting and set design. Rarely have I seen neo-noir pulled off so well visually in a campy horror flick. I loved how every lamp, chair and table on screen was made from glass instead of wood. You guys sound as cynical as the undead. I was pleasantly surprised by Daybreakers because I didn't expect much, and it totally met my minimal expectations.
