Netflix’s 'Daybreak' makes a strong argument for post-apocalyptic films to be comedies
Post-apocalyptic movies can get tiring. It’s a trope in itself. Always the same cliches: Humans fighting the supernatural (usually the undead), humans fighting bad humans and humans bonding over survival. The creatures may change but that doesn’t change that it’s an almost stale genre with limited opportunities for exploring outside-the-box ideas.
But does that mean one should stop watching or making shows or films about a zombie apocalypse? Absolutely not. What one needs to do more often, is to have fun with it.
Take Netflix’s new show ‘Daybreak’ for example. In this adaptation of Brian Ralph’s comic series by co-creators Aron Eli Coleite and Brad Peyton, a teenage outcast named Josh (Colin Ford) searches for his lost love Samaira "Sam" Dean (Sophie Simnett) and navigates a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies and Mad Max-style gangs in the city of Glendale, California.
In this world, all the adults have either died or turned into zombies. The high school cliques -- jocks, nerds, gamers and what have you -- have turned into territorial tribes. And none of them like each other.
The show may have been criticized for some lazy writing -- The Guardian review said, “'Daybreak' has nothing to add to the high-school canon... so it throws as much cool stuff as it can in your face to distract you” -- but it has other things that work for it.
It is astonishingly self-aware. It breaks the fourth wall often and it has a vibe to it reminiscent of ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’. Most importantly, it is funny as it is dark. It’s like what a zombie apocalypse would look like had it played out in the ‘Community’ universe: witty and meta.
There, of course, have been other funny post-apocalyptic films; and some of them have worked really well. For example, neither ‘Shaun of the Dead’ nor ‘Zombieland’ take themselves seriously. And at the heart of it, that’s what shows like ‘The Walking Dead’ can’t provide anymore.
The real world, the one outside of Netflix and TV screens, is already on the verge of collapse. With economic meltdowns, fascist regimes, addle-minded trigger-happy world leaders and an unpreventable climate apocalypse on the way -- and with it, a new kind of apartheid -- many have accepted doom as part of humanity’s fate.
With that in mind, if one has to watch make-believe and what our future might look like, is it not better if it has an element of fun? After all, the genre is not to be taken as instructive or even an accurate representation of a future reality. With the world as we know it having ended, it is only fair if one can have some witty commentary to go along with it, right?
‘Daybreak’ released on Netflix October 24.