The modern vampire trades castles for apartments and asks what immortality looks like with a lease. This tag collects reviews of contemporary vampire stories that drag the myth into the present day.
Gothic HorrorRice wrote 37 books that sold over 150 million copies, and the reason she matters to anyone studying craft comes down to one decision made in a short story around 1968. She moved the camera and gave the vampire the…
1970sCount Yorga dropped an old-world vampire into 1970 Los Angeles and got there before the rest of the genre. The film also bears the marks of its origins.
2020sNicolas Cage's gloriously unhinged Dracula anchors a comedy about escaping a toxic boss, undercut by an overstuffed plot. Reframe Dracula's servant Renfield as a man in a toxic codependent relationship with his narcissistic boss, and play it as a workplace…
1980sNicolas Cage delivers one of the most committed and bizarre performances ever as a yuppie who thinks he's turning into a vampire. Vampire's Kiss earns its 6.5 as a fascinating, deeply strange film that is far more interesting as a…
2020sA promising gothic premise about a sinister aristocratic family hiding a Dracula secret, sanded smooth for mass appeal. The film's fatal flaw is its caution.
1990sJohn Landis fuses the vampire film with the mob movie in a fun, tonally chaotic horror comedy. The film's premise is its strongest asset.
Book ReviewsThe confession of the guilt-ridden Louis across two centuries, with the amoral Lestat and the doomed child Claudia. Lush and melancholic, the novel that reinvented vampire fiction, launched The Vampire Chronicles, and made the vampire a tragic, introspective figure.
1980sJoel Schumacher directs the story of teenage brothers moving to a California coastal town where the local cool kids are vampires. The Lost Boys is Joel Schumacher's 1987 American horror-comedy film depicting teenage brothers who move with their divorced mother…
2000sAlfredson's 2008 Swedish vampire film. The American remake softened everything that worked.
Body HorrorA 237-year-old vampire who hasn't fed in nine days walks into a Paris bar and meets a hematologist who knows what she is, offers his blood, and asks to study her in return.
Black ComedyVladislav Mortenson had been undead for three centuries, plenty of time to develop some very unhealthy habits. Not the blood-drinking—that was biological necessity.
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