Daybreakers

Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

(R)

***

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It’s 2019, and vampires have taken over the world.

After the toothless PG posturing of the dreamy Twilight movies, it’s “a kick” to see an R-rated film about vampires, said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. Directed by Australian brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, Daybreakers doesn’t “spare the gore.” Starring Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, this “darkly stylish” film is set in a dystopian future where vampires rule the world, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. The bloodsuckers are suffering a shortage of the red stuff and need to find a substitute. The Spierigs go a “long way toward restoring what’s properly gross” about the vampire genre by including enough gruesome scenes to make it “unmissable for goreheads.” The movie’s entire bloodthirsty society is “fully and effectively imagined,” said Maitland McDonagh in The Hollywood Reporter. The gray glass-and-steel architecture reflects the vampires’ cold souls, and even their coffee bars serve blood instead of milk. But despite all the gory detail, the filmmakers “can’t pump any real life into the bloodless script.”