The witty set-up to the Spierig Brothers’ vampire flick introduces a 2019 dystopia (actually Sydney) ravaged by Sam Neill’s corporate bloodsuckers. Humans are farmed for their blood, white-collar parasites such as Ethan Hawke’s haematologist use plasma cafes for their daily fix, and, as in The Matrix, every other character sounds suspiciously Antipodean. “Life’s a bitch, then you don’t die,” quips Hawke, whose unlikely entanglements with resistance fighters Willem Dafoe and Claudia Karvan (a cut-price Carrie-Anne Moss) point towards salvation.
Verdict:
Though Blade and Daywatch have explored these dark corners before, there’s some fun to be had as bodies explode and baddies mutate. But iffy plotting, squiffy dialogue and directorial indecision – is this po-faced science fiction or hokey horror? – leave the film, like its protagonist, torn between two extremes.
