Daybreakers

The strangest thing about Daybreakers is that it's a b-movie. Why is that so strange? Well, simply put... because it isn't a b-movie.

Moreso than almost any other genre, the b-movie genre has gone through almost no evolution. Action movies have gone from James Bond to Die Hard to the Bourne Films, Romance has gone from Gone With the Wind to Breakfast at Tiffany's to When Harry Met Sally (and seem to have stalled there), but B-movies? B-movies haven't really changed, it seems, and there's an interesting reason why.

Strictly speaking, if there was a definition of a b-movie it would be a movie that doesn't innovate at all and is a possesses a simple, almost juvenile plot. The kind of plot a teenager would dream up while listening to some sick music on his mp3 player as he paces his room. A b-movie doesn't try to be a b-movie, in fact, any movie that tries to be a b-movie isn't one. A b-movie is, by definition I would say, a movie whose creator honestly thought that this movie is going to be totally awesome, that this teenage fantasy is phenomenal. In a way, they mimic pop culture without innovating at all or producing anything of real substance.

And that's totally fine. There's a sort of juvenile joy in watching a b-movie, a sort of callback to your own adolescent fantasies where you imagined yourself impressing all your friends as you acted totally hardcore and fought back a bunch of zombies. B-movies are a part of us, they are raw id.

Nowadays, though, most "b-movies" are accompanied with a certain amount of winking and nudging. The movies no what they're doing, they're savvy of the genre tropes they're running into. If they aren't directly homaging the b-movies of the past then they're at least not taking themselves seriously. And, while that certainly has its place, a b-movie it does not make. Oddly enough, however, these not-so-subtle homage/parodies of b-movies of the past have been taken to be the real thing. The parody has taken the place of the original. And, well, if you're always parodying the same thing, obviously the movies aren't going to evolve, the jokes aren't going to get fresher.
Nowadays, movies that try to be bad are called b-movies. The truth about b-movies is exactly the opposite. B-movies have always been movies that think they're really awesome, they're adolescent wet dreams where you use guns and science to score chicks and save the world. A b-movie can't try to be a b-movie. Daybreakers doesn't try to be a b-movie.
But Daybreakers is totally a b-movie.

And I love it for it. Daybreakers is one b-movie in a generation of new b-movies. It's trying to be a good movie, and... it is, kind of. It feels like a it could be a good movie but at the same time it doesn't. It's shot with a lot of cinematic flair, at times it certainly looks really cool, but the cinematic flair is so... flair-y that it almost feels inappropriate. It's devoid of any of the "genre-savviness" or humor of the b-movies of today. Daybreakers is super... nay... hyper serious. It has a few edgy, novel ideas like "Duuuude, what if humanity is the infection?!" that you would think is hilarious but, much like the Terminator movies (1+2, there are no others), while watching the fiction is totally serious and definitely happening.

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Daybreakers is a pop culture spectrum. Its beginning is nothing like its ending. It starts as the Matrix, becomes Underworld and then is Blade. But in truth, it isn't really like any of those movies. It's a real b-movie. It's a movie that feels like the director simply went back in time, took a movie idea out of his teenage-self's head, and filmed it. If you watch it as an A-movie it isn't good. It doesn't bring anything new to the table other than maybe one or two novel ideas. But when you change your perspective, when suddenly you re-inhabit your adolescent self and watch and enjoy all of the fond memories of how you too (and don't tell me you didn't) fantasized about stab-punching vampires in the face. If you could just be that teenage boy again, pacing in his room and listening to his mp3 player, dreaming of being a vampire scientist stabbing dudes in the heart and making them burst into a fire-y explosion... well then, this movie becomes fantastic.

As an aside, though... what is with all the fucking bats?