★ 1/2 out of four stars
Rating: R for violence, language and brief nudity.
In the future, vampires run the show. Can't drive during the day? Cars are fitted with blackout windows and driven via video screen. Need blood? It's farmed in dairy-style facilities where the few surviving humans are sucked dry.
But that supply is about to run out, so blood baron Sam Neill has his best man on it, hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke, right, pale and fanged). Edward will find a blood substitute, something they can bottle like pinot noir and keep the vampires from devolving into gnarly, uncivilized wraiths.
"Daybreakers" is a stylish but unavoidably silly sci-fi vampire thriller shot in that "Matrix"/"Gattaca" futurescape of Australia. German co-directors the Spierig brothers dazzle us with the inventiveness of this post-human world where even Uncle Sam has fangs ("Capture Humans!" reads the poster). But when Edward stumbles into the human underground (Willem Dafoe, with a crossbow, and Claudia Karvan), the movie becomes a conventional hunters-hunted "rebels" tale.
