Ahh yes, another vampire story with a fascinating premise. Daybreakers is a 2009 science-fiction film written and directed by Michael and Peter Spierig. It tells the story of a futuristic world overrun by vampires. To put it simply, imagine a vampire outbreak. Instead of eradicating vamps (that’s how cool people say vampires), humanity decides it’s better to become one instead of staying as a human. If you really think about it there are some great advantages of being a vamp: you live and stay young forever, you will never contract any diseases; basically, you remove death and growing old, which is something humanity been trying to achieve since the dawn of time. But of course, you can never see the sun again, and you have to drink human blood to survive, but hey there is always a cost for everything, am I right?
But if everyone is a vamp, whom they should drink from? And that my friend is the main conflict of the movie.
[SPOILER ALERT]
In this world, humans are hunted and farmed for blood, as the poster has shown. The world has adapted itself to ease the life of the nightwalkers, daylight shield on buildings and cars, custom cameras for daylight driving (because you can’t have a windshield, duh), blood-laced coffee shops, even some community alarms to warn you about sunrise like the one they have in North Korea; basically, all life aspects have adapted itself to operate during night time. With no disease, forever youth, and technology to support your blood-drinking-sun-avoiding lifestyle, life can’t get any easier for vamps. On the other hand, remaining humans live in fear of getting captured and farmed for blood like some cattle.
10 years after the initial outbreak, humanity (or should I say vampirity?) faces a threat of extinction, as the surviving human population can no longer satisfy the needs of the blood of the vamps population. Starving vamps turn into bat-like monsters with no control of themselves. The main character, Ed Dalton, played by the awesome Ethan Hawke, works as a chief hematologist for a big blood-farming company with goals to find a blood substitute with secret hate of being a vamp and sympathy for human. Long story short, he meets with a human resistance group and a former vampire, Elvis, who gained his cure through an accidental short period sunburn. Ed later then finds out that cured vampire blood is the cure to turn back vamp to human. To summarise, if a vamp drinks Elvis’ blood, that vamp will turn back to human and so this newly cured human’s blood will also be a cure for other vamps.
That’s the gist of the story. The question is, how realistic it is?
1. Life Changes to Suit the Pandemic
Good thing about pandemic is that it forces people and society to change their lifes for the better. Black Death in middle ages created labor shortage that encourage innovation for more efficient and less worker working systems. Cholera outbreak in 1820s London changed how cities design their plumbing system entirely. Spanish Flu in 1918 revolutionalized healthcare in a big way. Asian Bird Flu in 2002 made wearing masks normal norms in many asian cities. From those examples we can easily see that instead of falling to the pandemic, human alter their lives and societies to work around the pandemic and hopefully prevent them from happening again.
This is the case as well for Vampire Pandemic in Daybreakers. Instead of succumbing and living in fear of the vamps, people decided to become vamps and alter their life to adjust to their new lifestyle. These new technologies are designed to help vamps avoid activities during daytime, and if they do have daytime activities, maximum protection technologies exist to help them.
Why is it realistic?
Throughout all those pandemics we always survive and tell the stories. Our ability to adapt and learn from past mistakes are the key in our survival. With the current pandemic, we are also still roaming on this earth with improvement made every single day. We always learn to be better in pandemic. This is how humans have been living for centuries and now we have technology to actually improve our lives even better.
Wearing masks, washing hands, and avoiding crowds are better alternatives than hiding from the sun everyday. Just imagine how many people will die from Vampire Pandemic because they want to see the sun and tired of the dark.
2. Superiority
Difference in skin color has created wars in human history, hell, even a small dispute can end in all-out-war among two different factions. Human always has the necessity to feel superior compared to other human. This sense of superiority had fuel some of the wars in history. Now imagine you have vamps among you with their superior physics, immortality, and immune from all of the craps most humans are scared to. Vamps will think they are the better creature on earth. Human hunting and farming are easily next on the list once they reach enough population to support the idea.
We always think we are better than animals, for the same reason as vamps, we also breed and farm certain animals for our consumption. This shows the true nature of humanity as we always try to dominate over the inferiors. Daybreakers clearly shows the rift between human and vamps as human is nothing more than just food ready to be consumed. And as human always does best, vamps in Daybreakers are also depleting their natural resources vital for their survival.
Why is it realistic?
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. The idea of farming one species to benefit one other species has been around for centuries. Through easy logical thinking one can easily deduct that vamps will farm human for their blood and basically will deplete it as well.
As good farming practice goes, I also believe somewhere in Daybreakers’ world some vamps community are farming human blood by giving them houses and spaces of their own and asked them to donate their blood periodically. Like, you know, blood farming organically? Or owning your own farm for personal consumption instead of full scale industrialization? They might co-exist after all. In the end, capitalist always ruins it even for vamps.
At least the animals and plants are happy since the demand of animals and plants produce will decrease significantly if everyone is a vamp. No need for that laxatives and late-night moisturiser anymore!
Can “The Cure” Actually Cure The World?
This is a pretty easy one. It will definitely cure the world. The cure is very easy to transmit, even if the population rejects the idea, you just have to let a cured vamp wander around a starving vamp community and boom it becomes a newly-cured-and-confused human community (such tactic is presented as well in the movie, unfortunately the human didn’t survive. I did say spoiler alert didn’t I?). Ironically, their thirst for blood will become the end of their vampirism.
But along with the cure a new problem will emerge as well. Some folks (most likely are the rich and powerful ones) will prefer to stay as vamps instead of being a fragile and miserable human. Sure you can trick them by serving cured blood discreetly into their meal, but they will also create a system to prevent such things from happening. Pure human blood will hard to come by but they still exist and these folks will try everything to get their hands on them. There will be tensions among human and hardline vamps, and even probably war, but human will eventually win by numbers and surviving vamps will have to hide again from everyone.
I mean, how long can you keep selecting your human blood carefully before one tiny mistake in screening and you drink cured blood instead? Vamps got no chance.
Will You Turn Yourselves?
Will I turn myself to become a vamp? Me personally, I’d turn myself and my loved ones. When the majority of the population turn, you’d know damn well that they are going to hunt you down, so like Ed’s brother turning Ed (yes Ed is turned without his consent), I’d turn myself and my loved ones for our survival. Will you do it as well?
