The blood-swillin’ lost boys of tomorrow can be found today in the ultra-stylized Vietnam vampire movie Daydreamers, directed by Timothy Linh Bui from the script by Bui and Doan Si Nguyen. In a brilliant animated opening sequence, the audience is shown how, hundreds of years ago, vampires avoided annihilation in Europe by fleeing to Indochina. Facing extinction from their human prey turning around and torching their a***s, vampires start assimilating into Asian society, hiding their blood dependency from the outside world. They survive by maintaining strict secrecy, which includes no killing humans and no acknowledgment that vampires exist.
Out in the countryside, the vampires follow rituals led by Vy (Thien Tu) to keep fighting their urge to feed on humans. Nhat (Tran Ngoc Vang), who was turned into a vampire as a young man, participates with the others, allowing himself to be chained up by the neck and have a bowl of blood waved in front of his face. If he is unable to suppress his natural urges to drink it, he will be shot with a silver bullet by Vy’s son, Loc (Thach Kim Long). He feeds himself on the blood of rats and is completely unhappy when he runs into a human girl, Ha (Trinh Thao), on a trip to the city.
“…death to anyone revealing or finding out that vampires are real…”
Trying to escape being beaten by a pack of mean girls, Ha jumps into the back of Nhat’s ride and leaves her wallet behind. Nhat’s monochrome existence gets a splash of color when his long-lost vampire brother, Marco (Thuan Nguyen), reappears in his life. Marco regales him with stories of the high life that the blood drinkers in the city get to enjoy, inhaling drugs that help them resist attacking the humans, known as pets.
Nhat is thrilled with the city life and Marco’s circle of friends, including Nguyen (Hoang Phi) and Moc (Le Tuyet Anh), who get into all the best clubs. This is thanks to Marco’s girlfriend, Trieu (Chi Pu), the queen of the vampires in Ho Chi Minh City. It is Triey who enforces the vampire’s code of secrecy, which calls for death to anyone revealing or finding out that vampires are real. It is then that Ha accidentally finds out something about Nhat while in a nightclub restroom together…
"…has both style and substance overflowing like arterial spray."
