Nosferatu (1922)
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu invented vampire cinema and still frightens a century later. The estate sued anyway and won, and a court ordered every copy destroyed.
Tag: Horror (Page 5)
2010sWhat We Do in the Shadows (2014)
What We Do in the Shadows earns its 8.5 by finding a joke the vampire genre had somehow left lying on the ground for a century. What if immortal creatures of the night still had to argue about whose turn…
1980sThe Hunger (1983)
The film looks extraordinary. The Hunger earns its 6.5 the way a fashion shoot earns a magazine cover.
1970sMartin (1977)
Martin earns its 8 by asking a question that quietly dismantles the entire vampire genre. What if there is no such thing as a vampire, only a disturbed young man who believes he is one?
2000sShadow of the Vampire (2000)
What if the actor in Nosferatu was a real vampire? The conceit is irresistible.
1980sNear Dark (1987)
Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark strips every vampire cliche and builds a Western instead. That tension carries the picture.
2000sThirst (2009)
Religious tragedy meets erotic horror, reviewed at Master of Worlds. Few directors would even attempt this combination.
2010sA Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
Ana Lily Amirpour's black-and-white Iranian vampire Western is the genre's most striking recent debut. The chador is the film's masterstroke of design.
2000sDaybreakers (2009)
The Spierig brothers imagined a near future where vampirism has won. It is a genuinely smart science-fiction idea, and for its first hour the film is a sharp dystopian satire.
2000s30 Days of Night (2007)
Vampires descend on an Alaskan town facing a month without sunrise. The idea is so good it feels stolen from someone smarter.
2010sLet Me In (2010)
Matt Reeves remakes Let the Right One In with care and conviction. Let Me In earns its 8 by being the rarest of things, an American remake of a beloved foreign film that justifies its own existence.
2010sStake Land (2010)
Jim Mickle's Stake Land uses vampires as backdrop for a melancholy survival drama. Sometimes the vampires are not the point.