MyRating: YY1/2Director: Michael Spierig & Peter Spierig
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Claudia Karvan, Michael Dorman, Isabel Lucas
MPAA: Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and brief nudity
US Gross: US$ 30.1 Million
Worldwide Gross: US$ 48.9 Million
Ten years from now, as a plague spreads uncontrollable, the vampires have overrun the earth, while the human population has remained only 5%. The humans are being hunted and then planted like farms, for supplying the bloods to the vampire race. But since the human race is near extinction and the human bloods become scarce, this is becoming a big problem for the vampires, as not only it threatens their food supplies, but also it has been increasing cases that the hungry vampires are slowly turned into wild and fierce monster-like creatures that will attack anyone in order to survive.
A vampire hematologist, Edward Dalton (Hawke), who works for a pharmaceutical company owned by Charles Bromley (Neill), has been working a research to find an artificial blood to substitute the real human blood, so to solve the crisis of blood requirements in the vampire society. But his experiment seems to find a dead-end road. Edward is different from most of the vampires, as he pities for the human race and does not want to drink their bloods. And when he meets with Lionel Cormac (Dafoe), a human who found his way to transform back from a vampire to a human, Edward starts to realize that there is a way to cure the vampire diseases. He is also introduced to a bunch of humans, who hide from the vampires, while they keep finding the remaining alive humans to join their force. But the more Edward involves with them, the more he is trapped in the war between the vampires and the remaining human beings.
I was waiting to see this movie, as it has a promising premise and a great cast. And, it's a vampire movie. However, I didn't feel really satisfied after watching it. Didn't think the plot was good enough, even though the story was interesting, but it was kind of fell flat at some points of the movie. Not enough actions. Not scary. Less fun as a vampire movie. And the way of transforming back from a vampire to a human, even though the idea seems to be original, I found that it was ridiculous.
The good thing is the great cast, Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe, even though they did not show extraordinary performances, but they surely gave the plus points. The direction was quite okay. The special effects were also quite cool, that made this movie certainly not looks cheap. But in overall, this is just an average vampire movie. (MJ)
