I went to see Daybreakers expecting some undemanding fun on a wet afternoon. The trailers promised Matrix style vampire antics, set in a future where bloodsuckers form the majority of the population. Perfect Friday fodder in other words, without the need to engage my brain: eyecandy would suit me just fine.

The first sign that the film was something other than — more than — what I’d anticipated was a beautifully executed worldbuilding scene, maybe fifteen minutes long, without dialogue. Oh, sure, there was some information presented in text form, but for the most part the nature of this vampiric future was conveyed using images alone. And what images: there was demonstrable imagination at work here, and a lot of interesting ideas extrapolating what a world dominated by vampires would be like. This is just the sort of thing that gets up the noses of people who don’t like genre stories, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a better use of the mind to devise a convincing parallel world than it is to depict a crumbling marriage in this one.

Anyway, the vampires depend on milking the last remaining humans of their blood, keeping their livestock in drugged stupor. But stocks are running low — within a month, there will be none left. And that means trouble. Without blood, vampires degenerate from debonair playboys and WAGs and become monstrous creatures resembling the bats they’re connected with. Trouble coming every day, as Frank Zappa put it: so what’s a poor vampire to do?

Yes, that did read ‘poor vampire’: the protagonist of the story — Edward Dalton, played by Ethan Hawke — is a vampire sympathetic to humans. Showing charity to some mortals on the run, he’s asked by them to contribute to their own plans for some kind of vampire/human rapprochement. What Edward comes across is bigger than that. Much bigger. Inspired by a former vampire who’s regained his humanity, Edward manages to recreate the conditions for the transformation to happen to order.

Only, that knowledge is a threat to the status quo. Edward’s employers are doing very well with things the way they are now. They want a synthetic blood product, which they can continue to sell, while reserving human blood for connoisseurs with cash.

All of this is realised with flair by the Speirig brothers, who jointly scripted and directed this pacy, well-constructed yarn. It’s refreshing to come across a non-sexy vampire tale: the abiding metaphor here is more a political one, with blood standing in for oil and lack of it leading to social chaos. There’s effective emotional content too: Edward’s relationship with his soldier brother cuts across the fault lines in the story. And there’s strong stuff going on between the boss of the corporation Edward works for and his mortal daughter, which is expertly and credibly used to trigger the turning point that results in the story’s denouement.

I won’t spoil the nature of that resolution, save to say it’s very well thought out. It has its roots in science of a sort, which the film has a dubious relationship with. There’s a scientific frame around vampirism that accounts for much vampiric behaviour, but at the same time vampires are still invisible in mirrors, which stretches credibility a little too far for me. That’s a minor point however: the story logic in general is unusually respectful of the audience’s intelligence. Perhaps too much so: I heard people puzzling how the end worked to each other as they left the cinema.

Daybreakers is an unusually good vampire film. In its own way it’s just as strong as last year’s superlative Let The One Right In, which is the weird Scandinavian indie single to the Muse-like stadium rock of the Speirigs’ offering. Well worth a viewing — and remember to take your brain with you.