What I Think About Movies I've Seen

A mere ten years from now, the world is a much different place. Most of the population has been turned to vampires, and most of the humans that are left are either in hiding or have been turned into non-voluntary blood donors. However, with more vampires than humans, the blood supply is very quickly being depleted and both species are facing extinction. Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, the lead researcher at a company trying to devise a blood substitute so that they can stop killing humans for their blood, and a man who was turned to a vampire against his will. His sympathy for humans is a rare thing, especially as blood rationing restrictions become ever more strict.

While driving home, Edward takes his eye off the road and gets into an accident. The other car is full of humans on their way to a safe house. Edward helps them evade capture by the police, and that sets off a chain of events that leads him to Cormac (played by Willem Dafoe) who had been a vampire but was able to be turned back to a human. Edward is intrigued by this, since a cure for vampirism is, at least for him, an even more attractive solution than a blood substitute. However, other vampires don't share that opinion, especially those whose livelihood is based on selling blood, and they do their best to try to stop him.

I think that the movie has an interesting premise, but it falls a little short in the execution. While it's certainly true that there is some suspension of belief to accept anything in the movie, some parts are harder to buy than others. The biggest issue that I had with it is that the movie is set in the year 2019, which just isn't far enough into the future to allow for almost the entire human population to transition to vampires, and then to develop such animosity toward those who haven't made the switch. I was also disappointed with the secret behind the cure because it was also a little hard to swallow. Beyond that, the visuals were pretty good but there were several loud, annoying screeches from various creatures throughout the movie that bordered on painful even though the rest of the movie sounded just fine. Had they toned down the audio a bit and set it a little further into the future, then I'd probably be willing to give it a much better rating.