As fang-mania continues to entrance audiences nationwide, another lame vampire movie is exactly what doesn’t sound like a good idea. Nevertheless, I ventured out to see “Daybreakers,” fully expecting a B-grade film packed with mindless gore and a generic plot. Turns out, it definitely was a B-grade movie, but that didn’t turn out to be a bad thing.

The story for “Daybreakers” involves an Earth where vampires have taken over and the few normal humans left are running for their lives, lest they be captured and “farmed” out to feed the undead populace. Naturally, a group of humans are fighting the system in order to preserve the dwindling human race.

This sounds epic in scale, but looking at the run-time — 1 hour 38 minutes — “chopped up” is the way this flick is more likely to come across. Yet somehow, the movie is able to not flop horribly and keeps you interested enough to be entertained, provided you keep in mind this is a B-grade state of entertainment.

What makes the movie stand out is the message and context in which it is set.

Man’s fear of death drives the human race to either become immortal monsters that will feed off of friends and loved ones, or remain human and become food for the conformist pointy-toothed masses. Fear of death has shaped the actions of mankind for as long as time has been recorded, so having immortality offered as an escape is appropriate.

Next up is man’s ability to hate that which is different. For the vampires in this world, lack of consumption of human blood over time will cause them to mutate from pale, cold vampires into more bat-like, Nosferatu-esque mindless beasts. Despite these beasts just being other hungry, undead people from day-to-day life, the vampires move to eradicate them in order to preserve their own un-lives. The ironic part of the vampire’s immortality is they are doomed to die in less than a month because they’ve killed those who aren’t immortal, while those same people are required to preserve said immortality.

To keep this diatribe rolling, we look to greed. Literal blood banks house captured humans in machines that siphon the blood from them to be packaged and rationed out to the populace. But eventually, a blood substitute must be discovered to allow the vamps to live. Naturally, the corporations behind the blood banks aren’t as interested in solving the problem and stopping the eradication of mankind, so much as allowing enough time to repopulate enough of the human herd so that rich clients can have still purchase pure blood, while the middle and lower classes are relegated to generic brand X.

While all of this philosophical insight comes across, “Daybreakers” provides a clear-cut hero and villain, tragic characters, a love interest and action mixed with some gore-tastic blood baths.

Now, don’t mistake all of these positive comments to mean there aren’t some serious cheese-ball scenes. The ridiculous and age-old tradition of vampires having no reflection is addressed when floating clothes are shown in rear-view mirrors. When a stake hits the heart of a blood-sucker they explode like a grenade. Vampires instantly burst into huge balls of flame at the slightest casting of sunlight upon their person. And finally, the animals of the world are nearly extinct because they aren’t smart enough to not walk into the sun and burst into flames, which has caused most of the world’s forests to burn to the ground because of the animal-inspired flash-fires. Which is actually pretty funny.

“Daybreakers” is one of the few vampire movies of late to not try and make the undead look overly sexy. This horror story has substance. Its themes are insights into what drives mankind. The B-grade story is almost needed in order to make the film not come across as preachy.

The last great bit of irony comes with the solution to the whole mess. I won’t ruin it — predictable though it may be — but I will say it involves circular thinking where the solution is created by the problem and can only right itself by utilizing itself. It’s like defining a word with the word itself.

Regardless, I recommend you see “Daybreakers” at some point. Don’t rush out to theaters immediately, but watch it at a discount place or get it on Netflix in a few months. Give it a whirl if you’re tired of seeing teenage vampires address raging hormones.

Gabriel Stoffa is senior in communication studies and political science from Ottumwa.