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Now that everyone wants to be a vampire or pines for vampires but doesn’t have sex with them, where else can vampire movies go?

According to the Australian production Daybreakers, lots of places. Directed by the Spierig Brothers, Daybreakers stars Ethan Hawke as the chief hematologist of a corporation that farms humans for their blood. It is the year 2019, ten years after an outbreak that turned most of the world’s population into vampires.

But just because nearly everyone is immortal doesn’t mean they don’t need food: the much-reduced number of humans means there isn’t enough blood for everyone to drink. And if the vamps don’t feed, their bodies break down. If they feed on other vamps, they mutate. What’s a bloodsucker to do?

Ethan’s job is to synthesize an efficient blood substitute; unfortunately he’s having an existential crisis. He doesn’t want to be a vampire, doesn’t want to drink human blood. His brother (played by an actor who looks like Jude Law crossed with Ray Liotta) is a soldier whose job is to hunt down humans for farming. The population is starving, there are blood riots, and Ethan’s boss Sam Neill wants that blood substitute yesterday.

Then Ethan literally runs into a group of human rebels who claim to have discovered a cure for vampirism. The people can become human again! But do they want that? Who wants to grow old and die?

What we have here is a high-concept film that brings up existential questions, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology (For a parasite to be successful, it must not only refrain from killing off its host but also ensure that the host thrives. See the toxo that lives in cats. Compared to toxo the vampire organism is greedy and stupid). However the filmmakers’ skills are strictly B-grade: cheap shock tactics from the Salem’s Lot school, blood and gore splattered across the screen, and ham acting from Neill and Willem Dafoe as the human rebel leader. Ethan at least takes the movie seriously (We still love him, even if one shot caused Noel and I to gasp, “Malaki na ang balakang ni Ethan!”)

So Daybreakers is an entertaining mix of the clever and the cheesy; we’ll call it Camembert. My rating: If you can spot existentialism, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology in a B-movie, String! (The best way to enjoy the movies is to entertain yourself.) If you like fangs, blood, gore, Kibble. If you expect a prestige project, Litterbox.

*after 6. Celine and Julie Go Boating, 7. Anne of the Thousand Days, 8. The Bakery Girl of Monceau, 9. My Night at Maud’s, 10. It’s Complicated, 11. Sunflower, 12. Being Julia.