'Daybreakers' a back-to-basics horror classic

Finally, someone has created a bloody, blackly comic horror film that deserves to be in the company of Stuart Gordon's Grand Guignol masterpiece "The Re-Animator" and Sam Raimi's goo-pumped demonic frightfest "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn."

It's called "Daybreakers," and it comes from Australian twins who call themselves the Spierig Brothers. They've made only one other movie, a 2003 zombie tale, "Undead."

With "Daybreakers," the Spierigs -- Peter and Michael -- have taken a low-budget production and twisted it into a fun and frenetic nail-biter, an apocalyptic tale of greed and survival in which vampires are as driven by quarterly reports as the humans used to be.

In 2019, a mutated virus from a single bat (you have to look carefully at the background TV screens to pick up some of the exposition) has turned most of humanity into vampires with large colored contact lenses. They carry on with their old human routines, except that they can only go out at night. The sun will fry them into blackened ash.

For 10 years, the growing vampire demographic has devoured most of the human population. Vampire soldiers track down the remaining humans, most of whom wind up naked in a hideous warehouse, strapped to machines that pump out their blood to be sold by the Bromsley Marks Corporation, run by a real corporate bloodsucker, Charles Bromsley (played with joyful nastiness by Sam Neill).

Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton (another vampire named Edward), a hematologist working to create a blood substitute for Bromsley before the humans disappear and the vampires starve.

In a nifty twist to the vampire lore, the undead citizens don't die without blood, but devolve into savage, batlike creatures called "subsiders."

One night while driving home, Edward nearly collides with a car driven by fleeing humans, among them the testy, crossbow-toting Audrey (Claudia Karvan). A human rights sympathizer - he refuses to drink human blood - Edward protects the humans from vampire cops, which is just what Audrey needed.

"We've been looking for vampires we can trust!" she says. She arranges a dangerous daytime meeting with a shotgun-toting human named Lionel who goes by the nickname Elvis. He's played by the fearless actor Willem Dafoe, who spits out his corny dialogue with zeal, as if he's the only cast member who realizes he's in a black comedy.

Elvis tells Edward he knows a cure that can turn vampires human again. But they're interrupted by Edward's gung-ho vampire brother Frankie (Michael Dorman), a dedicated soldier who brings in his fellow troops to capture the humans.

"Daybreakers" is a story about brotherly love (despite that Frankie bit Edward and turned him into a vampire against his will), a denunciation of the military-industrial complex already smacked around in "Avatar," and a comical indictment of greed and its uncanny ability to transcend humanity.

After all, Bromsley hired Edward to create a blood substitute, not a vampire remedy.

"It's never been about a cure," Bromsley confesses, batting his iridescent peepers at Edward. "It's about return customers!"

Like the best horror and science-fiction films, "Daybreakers" creates its own world and internal logic, although it's best not to look at it too closely. A mirror shot reveals that vampires don't cast reflections, yet they can appear on a TV screen? Why do 2019 cars look just like current Chrysler 300s and Toyota Priuses? (Elvis drives "vintage" muscle cars of the Mustang and Trans-Am persuasion, so as to dodge the futuristic vehicle issue.)

Above everything else, the Spierig Brothers' "Daybreakers" is an action-packed, hard-R horror film that doesn't ignore its exploitation roots. Heads burst in crimson showers. Bodies get torn to pieces. A blood-spraying orgy of hungry vampires is captured in a sleazy slow-motion shot intended to be over-the-top.

What's more, "Daybreakers" is a back-to-basics, George Romero-esque terror film, and the perfect antidote to a decade of pseudo-horror movies dominated by Asian women trying to scare people with stringy hair and sallow eyes.

"Daybreakers"Rating: #9733; #9733; #9733; #189;Starring: Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Claudia Karvan, Michael DormanDirected by: The Spierig BrothersOther: A Lionsgate Films release. Rated R for language, nudity, extreme violence. 98 minutes