MOVIE REVIEW
Daybreakers (2010)
Ben Rothstein/Lionsgate
On its mission to suck the unoriginality out of the vampire canon, “Daybreakers” can’t avoid the familiar altogether. Traces of Alfonso Cuarón’s future-citizens-in-revolt “Children of Men,” itself an adaptation of P. D. James’s 1992 novel, are all over this breakneck action-horror hybrid written and directed by Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig. Both follow a disenchanted brainiac (here, Ethan Hawke’s reluctant bloodsucker Edward Dalton) who’s also humanity’s last hope. In the 2019-set world of “Daybreakers,” vampires have taken over, leaving only 5 percent of the human race still breathing — which, in turn, means that the now-rulers’ life liquid (human blood) is running out. Dalton, a top-ranked hematologist, stumbles across a cure, though vampires toting automatic weapons and sporadic geysers of dark-red blood make enacting the solution difficult as expected.