Daybreakers

There seems to be a fad for pairs of brothers to co-create movies. The Weinsteins just produce them, while the Coens, Hugheses and the unpronounceables from the Matrix series share directorial honours too. Australia's Spierig brothers have joined the international band of cinematic brothers with their third feature film, Daybreakers. It's a good effort to assuage the critics of their two Undead bloodfests.

Accused of producing camply comic horror films with weak scripts, the brothers returned to the fray with a glossy action epic headlined by two Hollywood stalwarts. Ethan Hawke is a vampire and blood research boffin in a future world where humans are an endangered species. Its few surviving rebels are led by a re-humanised former vampire and master auto mechanic (William Dafoe) and a female interest (Australian TV star Claudia Karvan).

Most non-zombied humans are farmed for their blood by an omnipotent conglomerate headed by Australia's ubiquitous movie star Sam Neill. He and Hawke have to look at their non-sunlit world through zombie contact lenses, which may explain Hawke's zombie-like dearth of physical and ocular activity. Neill copes better with his lenses and is suitably unctuously boo-able.

Dafoe's performance is, by his usual standards, remarkably restrained, even when he's hoisting his crossbow. It is a highly effective weapon against lasers and tranquillizer guns, and almost as incredible as the fire-and-sun wine-making technique used to turn vampires back into humans with hearts that beat again.

The saving graces of this far-fetched homage to horror films are several non-cliched plot details and a lot of neat nerve-jangling special effects. Gore splatters and spurts giddily from decapitated and chewed bodies. Outstandingly ugly vampires and "subsiders" zoom, dash and suck blood convincingly, enough to make me flinch and squirm with guilty pleasure.

Good, silly entertainment and only 90 minutes long.