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Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe

Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe in a scene from Daybreakers. Photo credit: Ben Rothstein.


Having tackled more than one detective role, suited up to play a bootlicking underwater engineer and even hit the big screen as a rather famous carpenter, gifted actor Willem Dafoe can now add vampire hunter to his resume thanks to his role in sci-fi thriller Daybreakers. But no need to worry - Twilight, this ain’t.


On the phone from New York, the unmistakable voice coming through on the other end confesses that despite getting an Academy Award nomination for his slithering and scary turn in Shadow of the Vampire, and now appearing in another vampire movie, he has no special interest in the lore of the undead, though he fully understand its appeal.


“When I was a kid, I grew up watching horror films. I think that’s the first cinema I saw so maybe that says something, but other than that, [I don’t have an interest in it] in particular,” he offers. “But the vampire myth is a great way to talk about things in a coded way. It’s enduring and also very flexible.”


Fans of vampire lore (daylight burns, those spiky chompers and unreal irises are all intact here) mixed with film noir-ish visuals and loads of action will find plenty to love about Michael and Peter Spierig’s Daybreakers and its stylized look at what unchecked greed and power look like in a world overrun by bloodsuckers.


When that sweet, red, life force starts to run out, humans are farmed for their blood as ethical hematologist Edward Dalton (a suitably cadaverous Ethan Hawke) tries to seek out a suitable substitute. It soon becomes clear, though, that not everyone is interested in giving up immortality and eternal youth – even if it means the extinction of the human race.


That's where Elvis comes in.


No, not that Elvis. Here Dafoe sports a white tee, bomber jacket and cuffed jeans to play Lionel 'Elvis' Cormac, the campy comedic relief that provides a balance to the gore and guts that give the film its horror cred and provide plenty of jump-out-of-your-seat moments.


“He’s a car customizer, kind of a hipster, that through strange, almost divine accident, his life is changed,” says Dafoe of his character. “He’s kind of born again and becomes basically [part of] a small group of people who are trying to save humankind.”


Watch the trailer and a clip from the movie


Sam Neill in Daybreakers
They only come out at night: Sam Neill in Daybreakers. Photo credit: Ben Rothstein.

Along with Hawke’s blood expert and newcomer Claudia Karvan as one of the last remaining humans, Dafoe stands up for the mortals with crossbows aplenty and a deadpan delivery that allows the talented thesp to do what he does best: own the screen no matter how big, or small, the role.


“I choose by instinct and by the smell of things,” he says when asked how he picks movie roles. “If even the small roles have a specificity to them, it’s because I connect to the experience and I commit myself to it before we even get in it. I always approach what I do in a kind of personal way and where you find those opportunities isn’t always gonna be in the lead role, isn’t always gonna be in the supporting role, isn’t always gonna be with a great director…you gotta look.”


Dafoe certainly does sink his teeth into the role of one of the rag-tag resistance fighters and appreciated the film's balance of laughs and what he calls “gross-out splatter”. He credits the movie’s ambitious matching of differing genres and aesthetics to the steady hands of the Spierig brothers, who previously made only one feature film, Undead, though you’d never be able to tell.


“They know their stuff and they’re very clear and quite tenacious about realizing what they see,” he says. “The mark of a first-time director, there’s a certain maybe lack of confidence but these guys are quite assured and I even experienced that when I talked to them. They can’t be bullied and they know what they want and they were very clear about how they approached me when they were pitching the project to me. I had the sense that they really gave a great value to what the actors would have to contribute and what they needed from the actors.”


In addition to Hawke, whom Dafoe calls a “sweet guy who's very bright”, the twin brothers cast Sam Neill as an amoral, opportunistic businessman and fellow Aussies Karvan and Isabel Lucas as two of the world's last mortals for an impressive ensemble cast that kept it loose on-set in Brisbane, Australia despite the film's sombre narrative.


“You’re in that [movie] world and some of that world is pretty scary and pretty unpleasant so you’re trying to stay in that head[space] but at the same time everything you’re doing is pretty far from your experience," says Dafoe. "It’s pretty light on-set and these guys love what they’re doing so it all feels like problem-solving. Nobody gets too stressed out.”


In terms of what he thinks this movie has to say about humanity and its fatal flaws, Dafoe is surprisingly quiet, but perks up while explaining what he thinks the movie accomplishes.


“What I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to tell a story that, for me, has resonance or has a good sense of humour or is entertaining or changes the way we think. And I think this film, in varying levels, does all those things.”



Daybreakers opens in Cineplex theatres January 8.



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Cineplex Inc. ("Cineplex") is the largest motion picture exhibitor in Canada and owns, leases or has a joint-venture interest in 130 theatres with 1,352 screens serving approximately 70 million guests annually. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Cineplex operates theatres from British Columbia to Quebec and is the exclusive provider of UltraAVX™ and the largest exhibitor of digital, 3D and IMAX projection technologies in the country. Proudly Canadian and with a workforce of approximately 10,000 employees, the company operates the following top tier brands: Cineplex Odeon, Galaxy, Famous Players, Colossus, Coliseum, SilverCity, Cinema City and Scotiabank Theatres. Cineplex shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol "CGX".