‘Daybreakers’: somewhat broken

I saw Daybreakers yesterday. Written and directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, the Australian film-making duo who brought us the entertaining zombie/alien film Undead a few years ago, Daybreakers was a movie I have been quite looking forward to seeing. The Spierig Brothers have been given a decent budget and some actual production values and are making what looks to be a slick, intelligent, futuristic vampire film. The premise is excellent: as a result of viral infection, the vast majority of the world’s population have become vampires and are now running out of their preferred food source — human blood. It all sounds very promising indeed, and the approving murmurs on the interwebs seem to back this up. Unfortunately, the film fails to deliver.

DaybreakersI can be a harsh critic, I know that. The older I get, the less patience I seem to have for things that waste my time.  (Why am I on Facebook? Ah, the paradox!) I’ll put books aside unfinished if they don’t grab my attention after a few chapters, I’ll stop watching tv shows if they get boring or stupid. I have not yet started to walk out on movies, probably because they are only a couple of hours long and I’m usually at the half way point before I start to get really irritated anyway. Funnily enough, the more potential a movie has, the more disappointed and annoyed I am when it doesn’t pan out. Daybreakers is one of those movies. It could have been a really excellent film, but the scripting is lazy and full of contradictions, inconsistencies and logic holes. The direction is hackneyed at times, with some very cheap fright moments — shrieking bats flying at the camera, anyone? It’s a B movie, at best. And that’s a shame.

The rest of this post will contain some major spoilers, so if you’re intending to see Daybreakers, perhaps you should come back and read it later.

The primary issue I had with the movie was the supposed science behind the vampirism. Now I dig science-based monsters. I love it when a writer or film-maker tries to work out the real-world basis and mechanics of mythical creatures, and gets it right. (The UK television show, Being Human, does this exceptionally well with werewolves and, only a touch less successfully, with vampires.) The thing is, once you start getting your science on, you need to follow it all the way down the line. You can’t cherry-pick from the established mythos based on what will look pretty or cool on the big screen. It has to work with the science you’ve set up; that’s Basic World-building 101.

One of the key plot-points in Daybreakers is that the vampires need human blood to survive. We are told this several times throughout the film, and shown the dramatic physical and mental deterioration a vampire suffers when deprived of human blood for just 30 days. Yet the film’s vampire hero, Edward (played by Ethan Hawke), has taken a moral stance and refuses to drink any human blood. Pig seems to do just fine for him and — wait, hang on a second. Vampires can survive on animal blood? Really? So what’s the fricken problem? Sure human blood is primo and would be very expensive when available, but if animal blood will suffice then where are all the pig blood farms? And cow blood farms and horse blood farms and … you get the picture. There would be no food shortage issue — the issue that drives the film — if vampires can live off the blood of any mammal. It’s lazy scripting, presumably done to make Edward more heroic to a human audience and more of an outsider to his own kind, but it makes no sense.

There are several other science-logic miss-steps, albeit not as integral to the plot. Why are vampires not reflected in mirrors but picked up on a digital video camera? Why the non-reflective bit at all, when it comes right down to it? What kind of fricken virus does that? (Oh right, the sneaky It-Looks-So-Cool-On-Screen virus.) Why do vampires explode like dynamite when their heart is pierced by a length of wood? How does that bit of physiology actually work? The immolation by sunlight I can live with, but not the fact that some vampires display immediate injuries which take some time to heal — Frankie shows the shadow of a burn on his cheek hours after a brief brush with the sun; Cormac has hideous burns after flying several feet through daylight — while Edward is directly and repeatedly exposed to sunlight for several seconds, bursting dramatically into flames each time, and suffers not even a singed eyebrow. (Let’s not mention the heart monitors he’s hooked up to, which are obviously made from platinum-grade asbestos.)

I will give the Spierig Brothers full points, though, for not mentioning crosses, churches or holy water. Not once, not even with the brush of obligatory post-modern irony. Good call, boys.

Dafoe, Karvan and Hawke

"Look, just give us a script that makes sense and no one has to get shot."

There are numerous other plot problems, unrelated to world-building. A bunch of refugee humans have been found and are being brought back to the resistance headquarters where they’ll be safe from the vampires. Naturally, they travel at night, in a suspicious-looking convoy, with all their windows down to reveal just who is riding in the vans. You know, to keep safe from the vampires. The humans also stay in contact with each other via a radio/telco device that allows almost immediate tracking of the frequency/call back to HQ. Naturally, they keeping using the device for precious seconds after they’re informed that the convoy has been attacked. You know, to keep safe from the vampires. And poor Claudia Karvan’s character, Audrey, somehow manages to stand lookout in a huge field with practically a 360 degree view (specifically chosen as a safe meeting point because of this) and still not see the vampire soldier sneaking up behind her. I think she was distracted by a bat (seriously). That’ll teach the menfolk to trust a lady with such an important job.

Which is my other major beef with Daybreakers. There are female faces on screen (vampire extras on the street, human extras in the resistance) but very little in the story itself.  Women play only two significant roles: Audrey, who keeps getting captured and needing to be rescued; and Alison, the still-human daughter of the head vampire honcho, Charles Bromley. Both women serve more as plot devices than characters. Its the men who drive the narrative and get all the meaty roles (and choicest dialogue). Audrey is there to be Cormac’s number two and the obligatory girl among boys. And to get rescued. (To give the Spieirg Brothers their due, she is not portrayed as the stereotypical kickass, leather-clad glamour grrl, but then it’s not that kind of film.)  Alison likewise is not a character in her own right. Appearing in the second half of the film, she serves merely to fill out her father’s emotional palette and provide fodder for a few nasty scenes that show vampires at their worst. It’s somewhat telling that Bromley has a daughter and not a son. I can’t help but think that Daybreakers would have been a much more interesting film if Alison had been a male character, if some of the soldiers in the vampire army were women, if Audrey was actually the leader of the resistance rather than second in command. None of that would have helped with the plot-holes, but it might have given a more textured rendering of the story.

I’ve now spent more time writing about Daybreakers than I did watching it, which seems odd. But thinking about why this film failed and analysing its faults actually makes me feel like I’ve gotten back some of that wasted time in the cinema. Even bad story-telling can be instructive. That’s what I keep telling myself.

10 February 2010
Categories: Movies & TV . Tags: , , . Author: kirstynmcdermott . Comments: Leave a Comment

Beyond Post-Apocalypse: ‘The Road’

I’ve been fairly disappointed by most of the movies I’ve gone to the trouble to see on the big screen lately. Avatar, Holmes, The Lovely Bones, among others … all big budget productions with effects up the whazoo but all falling down, to greater and lesser extent, in terms of plot and execution. (You remember what “plot” is, don’t you? Thought I’d ask because James Cameron, apparently, does not.) But I do wonder how my level of anticipation influences my experience of a film. If I go into the theatre thinking, this will absolutely brilliant, am I bound for disappointment more often than not? Should I just sit down with my boysenberry choc-top and think, okay, this will be mildly entertaining at least and, oh look, air conditioning, and take anything above that as a bonus? Am I suffering from the malady of great expectations?

The RoadNo, I think not. Because last Thursday I saw The Road, directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay by Joe Penhall. The movie is based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name and the adaptation of the source material is nothing less than masterful. Subtle, faithful and unflinching, with just enough tweaks as were necessary to bring McCarthy’s bleak yet ultimately hopeful story to the screen.

As a novel, I love The Road. It was the first book in a long time that pulled me in so immediately and so powerfully that I found it hard to put aside. I fell asleep late the first night I started it because I simply could not make myself stop reading. It’s a book I recommend to everyone and one that would easily skate into my Top 100 Books Ever List, should I ever decide I have the time to waste in making one. Possibly even my Top 10 List.

Now, I’d heard very good things about the movie from its bumpy and ill-handled release in US cinemas last year. I greatly enjoyed Ghosts of the Civil Dead and The Proposition (two of Hillcoat’s other films) and I’ve seen Viggo Mortensen in enough varied roles to feel confident he could play the Father without any trouble. So I went into cinema with very high expectations indeed. Expectations which were met in spades. The Road is a beautiful, disturbing and vitally important film. It shows us the post-apocalypse as it will be, not how we often like to fantasise about it. No zombies, no flame-throwers, no hiding out in shopping malls or amusement parks, no fun and no wisecracks. Just survival and the brutal, human need to believe that there is something worth surviving for, even if all evidence points to the contrary.

The Road is a near perfect film on all levels. The screenplay doesn’t miss a beat, the direction is elegant and the performances from the entire cast are complex and beautifully understated. The cinematography and the score exquisitely capture the look and sound of a world very much on its knees.

I’m a book person. As much as I enjoy film and television, I’ll almost always take words over pictures. With this bias, I’m often wary of adaptations. At best, they usually offer little more than a visual synopsis; at worst, they feel like they’ve torn the heart out of a much loved story. However, The Road is one of those very rare films that I love equally as much as the book. Let the Right One In is another, as is Fight Club. You need to see The Road, if you haven’t already. Don’t even worry about reading the book first –  in a way, I kind of envy you the tabula rasa experience.

(By the way, the fact that it didn’t get an Oscar’s Best Picture nomination? When there were TEN slots to fill this year? It’s a bloody disgrace and an embarrassment to the Academy, or it should be. I mean, seriously. Avatar? For best picture? Perhaps the apocalypse isn’t so far off in the distance after all.)

9 February 2010
Categories: Movies & TV . Tags: , , . Author: kirstynmcdermott . Comments: Leave a Comment

Non-Standard Stories

Yesterday I started and finished Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton. The novel tells the story of a four year failed relationship between the eponymous Lenore (a epicurean columnist specialising in cakes) and Harold (a photographer whose work has him constantly travelling the globe), rendered in the form of an auction catalogue with photographs of almost all the items up for sale accompanied by brief notations. If you want to get an idea of the format, Amazon has a “look inside” gallery on the book’s product page.

Important Artifacts and Personal Property ...

Important Artifacts ...

I saw this in a art/design shop and immediately snapped it up. I’m a sucker for strange books, for experiments in style and different ways of storytelling, for the daring and the innovative and, yes,  the sometimes-too-clever.  Besides, the story-by-artifact concept touched near to some ideas of my own which I’ve been carrying about for a couple of  years now. I’m not sure if anything will ever comes of those, but we’ll see.  Whatever happens, it will be quite different to what’s been done here.

According to this New York Times review, Shapton decided to create the book “because she noticed how the lot descriptions in some estate catalogs added up to elliptical plots about the lives of the former possessors”. It’s a neat idea: if all those things we acquire and accumulate throughout our lives can tell others about us and those lives we’ve lead, why not let them speak for themselves? And, for the most part, this is what Important Artifacts does. Some additional background and exposition is provided by the auctioneer’s notes — Lot 1172, for instance, is a small travel clock with its original box. The notes inform us that the clock was “given to Morris by Doolan” and, furthermore, that “Doolan insisted that the clock remain on New York time [where the couple lived]. Morris took the clock on two trips, but complained it was too heavy”.

The items presented for auction varies from the extrinsically if marginally valuable — furniture, vintage homeware, designer clothing — to the utterly trivial but significantly personal — photographs, shopping lists, party invitations. Together they give a coherent picture of the couple’s relationship as well as their individual personalities and quirks, ambitions and fears.  It’s a book  I really should have loved. I’m fascinated with personal ephemera and found objects. I adore inscriptions in second hand books and snapshots of strangers. But, unfortunately, I didn’t love Important Artifacts. The last half was a tad boring and I felt disappointed by the time I closed the back cover.

I think the problem lies with story. The book is clever and beautifully put together, the objects are well chosen — perhaps a little too well chosen at times; the couple seems to have exceedingly good taste in everything — and the notations manage to tread the line between poignancy and sentimentality rather well, and provide a far amount of humour to boot.  But the story, oh the story. That thing that pulls you along once you’ve worn out the novelty/curiosity factor of the presentation, that thing barely limps across the finish line.  It’s a simple, ordinary and predictable story: two people meet, fall in love and try to make things work for a few years before finally realising that they’re just not meant to be. Now there’s nothing wrong with simple and straightforward, but when you know the ending before you start and there are no real surprises or revelations along the way, then something else really needs to grab you.  And all that’s left is character, the people about whom the story speaks.

Maybe that’s where Important Artifacts falls down. I simply didn’t feel engaged with either of the characters, and didn’t really care whether they broke up or stayed together. (Harold was irritating, but only mildly, not even enough to engage me on a negative level.) This might be an inevitable effect of the format of this novel, and perhaps you can never really feel close to people when all you’re given is a selected list of their possessions. However, I suspect if greater weight had been given to the really personal stuff, to all the embarrassing and unflattering things no one wants other people to see, it would have been different.  Sure, that kind of stuff would hardly be sold off at auction but then the conceit of this is stretched thin anyway — there’s all sort of things that wouldn’t be auctioned unless the former owners were very famous, so let’s not quibble.

In short, Important Artifacts doesn’t seem to know what it is. It reads a little like a puzzle or cipher, except there’s no real mystery to unravel. It’s trying to tell a love story, but the intimacy this requires is missing, and sorely missed.  And this is a shame, because the idea of the book is fantastic and — as far as I know — unique. Food for thought, most definitely.

House of Leaves

House of Leaves

It also brought to mind House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski — not that there is anything similar between the two in terms of plot, character or approach. It’s a book I read reluctantly, on the recommendation of a friend, and I didn’t expect to think much of it.  (Funnily enough, I’ve mentioned House of Leaves before, also in oblique comparison to another book. ) Danielewski’s debut novel is a haunted house story, a haunted human story. It’s big and convoluted and typeset to hell and back. And it’s quite brilliant. Deliberately frustrating and opaque as it can be  sometimes, the non-standard format works to support the story and enhance the reading experience. Danielewski knew what he was doing here, folks.

It could have easily gone the other way. It could have been a pretentious and inaccessible quagmire. But it’s not, and the reason it’s not comes down to story once again. House of Leaves is a labyrinthine, Russian doll of a novel. It’s a story — of a photojournalist living in a surreal house — within a story — of a reclusive blind academic — within a story — of the young man who puts it all together. Footnotes, extracts, film transcripts, photographs and other “artifacts” form part of the narrative.  There are appendices and an index. Like Important Artifacts, the book is a puzzle and a cipher; the difference is that there is a mystery at the heart of it. There is, in short, story.

Let’s pause a moment for clarification. By story, I do not mean plot. Story is shorthand for the way we see the world and talk about what we’ve seen. It includes — but does not necessary need — any or all of the following elements: plot, character, setting, motivation, action, resolution. [Side note: action does not just mean car chases, fisticuffs or blowing things to smithereens; resolution does not simply equate to solving mysteries, providing explanations, or tying things up with a neat and happy bow.]

In the narrative arts, story is queen. D’oh, right? But it’s amazing how many people seem to forget that. You might be the most brilliant wordsmith and stylist, or you might have a unique and extremely clever idea for how to render/present/format a book — hell, I’ll probably buy and read your work without thinking twice! — but it won’t matter if there is no real story. We human beings are storytellers, and storylisteners, from way back. It’s probably somewhere in our genes. Whatever else you do, don’t mess with that.

6 January 2010
Categories: Books & Reading . Tags: , . Author: kirstynmcdermott . Comments: Leave a Comment

Well, isn’t that nice?

I’ve just been alerted to the fact that my story, “Painlessness”, has gained yet another accolade.  It’s received an Honourable Mention in The Year’s best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition, edited by Rich Horton and published by Prime Books. Looking through the list of the other HM authors published on Fantasy Magazine’s blog, it’s safe to say I’m in amongst some very fine company indeed!

“Painlessness” will also be reprinted in the Brimstone Press anthology, Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror Vol. 4, due out in March 2010 and available for pre-order now. I’ve read a lot of the other stories to be featured in that volume, and can highly recommend them. You definitely want this book on your shelf.

Speaking of books and shelves, we have to move house in the new year and I’m suffering my usual bout of Too Much Stuff Anxiety. Most of the stuff is books. Including books which I’ve had for years and haven’t yet managed to read. And books that I have read but which I know I will never so much as look at again. Do I really need all those books? Those stacks of dead, dust-hoarding tree-flesh? For the last couple of years, I’ve been toying with an idea I call The 100 Books Project. It would mean culling my collection down to a mere 100 books and keeping it that way. An old book would need to be removed for a new one to be added. It doesn’t mean I stop reading, just that I stop owning. I would have to borrow more books, or give away the ones I buy after reading them unless they were good enough to oust a volume from the current 100.

Only 100 books. For the rest of my life. Part of me finds the idea absolutely liberating — as Tyler Durden says: “The stuff you own, ends up owning you.” Most of me, however, is still terrified by the thought of re-housing all my books. I love those books. They’re a huge part of my life. And yet, and yet …

Clearly, I’m not quite ready for The 100 Books Project.

But I have come up with a stop-gap. Starting right now, every new book I bring into the house will mean I need to send one of my current books away. Okay, so I’m not culling the number of books I own right now, but I am maintaining the status quo. It seems the only sensible way to proceed, lest I find myself living in a labyrinth constructed entirely of overflowing bookcases at some point in the non-too-distant future. Maybe, in a year or so,  I can work my way up to culling two old books for each new one. Maybe.

Today my much-anticipated copy of X6 arrived from Coeur de Lion. I am looking forward to reading this book so much, it’s going to jump the queue of all the other new books I’ve acquired in the past month. It’s getting read next, right after I finish Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente. But I digress.

X6 arrived, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace was promptly relegated to the discard pile. I felt so much better. You know, I think this is going to work.

10 December 2009
Categories: Books & Reading, Writing & Publishing . Tags: , . Author: kirstynmcdermott . Comments: 3 Comments

Toil and Travel

Did I say I would keep this blog updated regularly? And you believed me?

Some lovely news today: my story “Painlessness”, which won the Aurealis Award, the Ditmar Award, and the Chronos Award this past year, has now received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror (for 2008) to be published by Nightshade Press.  That little story is doing very well for itself indeed!

I’m away from home at the moment, toiling away in the wordmines at a writing retreat on Bribie Island. Well, not so much toiling as thinking and plotting and getting rid of my second novel’s flabby midsection. Which is toil of its own kind.

On Friday, I leave Australia for my first real holiday in years. New Orleans, Mexico and San Francisco, with a grand finale being attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose. Bliss!

Of course, once I’m back home in November, the real writing work begins. Editing the first novel, polishing away all the rough edges, beating my head against the screen in frustration … I’m genuinely looking forward to it. I’m guessing at that point, this whole Getting Published thing will finally sink in and start to feel real.

Okay, back to the toil. This is my last full day on Bribie and it’s glorious. But I shall lock myself in my room for a few hours and get some serious plotting done. Then maybe I can have one last walk on the beach.

5 October 2009
Categories: Travel, Writing & Publishing . Tags: . Author: kirstynmcdermott . Comments: 1 Comment

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