In the Daybreakers trailer, we see subversion of the traditional vampire film yet again. At the start, titles are used again to give a brief idea of the world displayed in the film which is somewhere in the near future represented the stylised buildings which are not like traditional bulidings of today. The most interesting part however is the second title which says "where almost everyone is a vampire" in this world the audience are imagining. This instantly spins the usual templates of vampire films with a primary protagonist being human or like "Blade" half human and the antagonist being the vampires but in this film, almost everyone on earth is a vampire. So when we imagine this world almost void of humans, it creates a unique situation of who to side with as the general population are the things we would normally see as the villains while humanity is scarce. We start to see other scenes of one person saying he is better at being a vampire and never was any good at being human, again picking up on this situation of maybe vampirism itself is the next step or not such a curse, supported by the next title "no one grows old" and one character saying their blessed with immortality. However, when we see the scenes of being hunted down and farmed for blood in labs we start to see the traditional view of vampires being evil but the world is more bleak in this film since humanity is much smaller and easily outnumbered by the vampires.
We the audience begin to see how this film is completely different in terms of genre and message as it has elements of post apocalyptic style with the whole humanity going extinct and the majority being science fiction when we see one of the main characters is a haematologist and tries to work on a blood substitute so his species can live on as the post apocalyptic side is strengthened by the underlying dilemma of the blood remaining will only last one more month. In all, the initial view of this world created in this trailer just becomes bleaker and bleaker as both species are on the verge of catastrophe but we then get to see the haematologist as our protagonist when we see the guilt he feels over using humans as he wants the substitute to stop the need for farming humans and when he actually helps the remaining humans work on a cure.
So when we watch the full trailer, while it was unclear at the start the usual good guy and villain template is actually followed but in a much more complex way if compared to "Blade" we it was clear if a little subverted through the half human hero. It also takes a much more science approach then action or horror as the vampires where created through a virus and focuses on creating cures and blood substitutes, all key codes and conventions of that particular genre. An interesting scene we see is how the ex-humans have turned their back on their once fellow humans by introducing propaganda for all people to hand over humans (seen in the screenshot below) which includes the picture used for recruitment in the army, representing how the priorities have changed as they want people to join up to hunt down the remaining humans instead of fighting global conflicts since the majority of people are now vampires and only care about one thing.
In terms of the colour used, it beaks the tradition of using red which is a key symbol of the vampire genre and instead uses many dark monotone colours. This is used to connote the state of the world and the mood displayed by the characters as dark, depressing and hopeless from the earlier idea of both species on the edge of dying out for closely related reasons due to vampires needing blood so capture humans, bleed them dry which then lowers the human population drastically etc. It resembles the acts of predator and prey scenarios in nature, giving the film a much more savage undertone as its like that between the two groups and it has ended up with their own extinction from "over eating" so to speak and not letting the population pick back up. It also shows the audience how if vampirism was a real life scenario, it wouldn't last due the reasons shown in the film as we, as a species, consume resources too fast without thinking of the consequences which could be seen as a hidden message to us as a whole since we are suing up most our resources and damaging the world through excessive use of fossil fuels etc. When we see the human hide out there is much more colour with greens and sandy colours, connoting that there is still hope for them but their life is in taters from the sandy colours symbolising the archaic lifestyle they have been forced to endure from being hunted down.
Another part wroth mentioning is the use of music towards the end of the trailer. It is the song "Running up that hill" by Placebo which strangely has been associated with a number of vampire media as well. The most recent being "The Vampire Diaries" and the reason it is used is because of the message it conveys through it's lyrics. It talks about wishing to change places like the vampires may wish to be human while humans wish to vampires, sparking the debate between viewers of what would they prefer to be human or vampire and if its a curse or gift. It also the title itself "Running up that hill" suggests its a struggle if we choose to be a vampire as literally running up a hill takes a lot of strength to do it and if we begin to give up we fall all the way back down, making us regret the choice we made. So it helps convey the message of the film and questions that typical fans of vampire films ask when watching these types of films through the supernatural connotations of its lyrics.
No comments:
Post a Comment