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7 vampire movies to (re)watch for Halloween
Thirst by Park Chan-wook, Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch, or the improbable Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal by Ariane Louis-Seize… Here are 7 must-see vampire movies to (re)watch for Halloween.
Dracula, a new adaptation of the classic by Luc Besson
We thought we knew everything about vampires. Yet, Luc Besson is coming back two years after the controversial Dogman (2023) to tackle one of the most iconic characters in literature and cinema… Dracula. In his new adaptation, the vampire remains a cursed prince, cold and lonely. Far from cheap gore and conventional screams, the French director explores the melancholic depths of the gothic character.
Indeed, Luc Besson confronts the literary monument by Irish novelist Bram Stoker, who wrote his Dracula in 1897. As always, he thinks big – €45 million and the European continant ravaged by war, passion, and faith. Will Caleb Landry Jones, with his tormented face, offer the prince of darkness a disarming humanity? Around him, Zoë Bleu, Christoph Waltz, and Matilda De Angelis complete this ambitious cast.
What are the best vampire films?
Among other masterpieces of vampire cinema, it would been wrong not to mention Nosferatu (1922), Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau‘s haunting work, as well as its remake by Robert Eggers. Dracula (1958), starring Christopher Lee, remains a must-see gothic reference.
The subtle Vampyr (1932) by Carl Theodor Dreyer, the macabre poetry of Let the Right One In (2008), the queer elegance of The Hunger (1983), the wild energy of Near Dark (1987), and the teenage fever in The Lost Boys (1987) are also worth rewatching… Here is our personal selection of the best films exploring the myth of the vampire for Halloween.
Near Dark by Kathryn Bigelow
Released in 1987, Near Dark marks Kathryn Bigelow’s debuts into genre filmmaking. It is also one of the greatest vampire films of the 1980s, though it long remained in the shadow of Joel Schumacher’s feature The Lost Boys, released the same year. Here, vampirism merges with American wandering. A band of nomadic vampires roams desert roads in a pickup truck, recreating a perverted family unit.
Kathryn Bigelow infuses this tale of love and blood with a twilight visual power, halfway between a western and a film noir. In the ever fading light, bodies are smelling desire and doom. Actor Bill Paxton plays Severen, a deranged biker-vampire with an almost Shakespearean glee. A taut, edgy film of toxic beauty.
Near Dark (1987) by Kathryn Bigelow, available on DVD and VOD.
Interview with the Vampire with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise
Released in 1994, Interview with the Vampire remains to this day the most operatic work of Hollywood vampire cinema. Neil Jordan adapted Anne Rice’s novel to craft a baroque saga in which blood is a poison, addiction, and eternity all at once. Tom Cruise shines in performing feigned cruelty as Lestat, giving his character an almost theatrical ambiguity. Opposite to him is Brad Pitt’s character Louis, eternally torn between morality and desire.
The film embraces the romantic scope of the 19th century only to explode it in a flamboyant gothic aesthetic. In an era of trivialized vampires, this work remains a pinnacle of dark lyricism.
Interview with the Vampire (1994) by Neil Jordan, available on Netflix and HBO Max.
Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch
With Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Jim Jarmusch offers an elegiac, elegant, almost static take on the vampire narrative. The doomed, cultured couple formed by Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston travel through the centuries as if walking across a library.
In Detroit and Tangier, the settings are relics, the sounds are hazy, and the light, always filtered, is dying. Jim Jarmusch shoots vampirism as a metaphor for art. Eternal life, yes, but at what cost? Far from horror, this film is steeped in melancholy, irony, and gentle decadence. A mesmerizing visual poem.
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) by Jim Jarmusch, available on MUBI.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola
Released in 1992, Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains a visual and sonic frenzy – baroque to the extreme and faithful to Bram Stoker’s novel. Gary Oldman delivers a brilliant and haunting performance as a count torn between cruelty and passion. The film brims with analog, almost handcrafted stylistic effects, in a celebration of cinema before CGI.
Sexuality is explicit, perverse, and hyper-stylized. Rarely has the vampire been this sensual, romantic, and grotesque at once. Coppola turns the myth into a Shakespearean tragedy soaked in blood, eroticism, and gothic splendour. Undoubtedly one of the greatest vampire films ever made.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola, available on Netflix.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), the debut film by Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour, blends spaghetti western, neo-noir, and feminist fable within a striking black-and-white aesthetic. Iran becomes a fantasized, almost spectral realm, where a solitary female vampire prowls around the city in search of justice and tenderness.
Dialogues are rare, but each shot is a sensory enigma. The omnipresent music fuses seamlessly with the stage directions. Jim Jarmusch and the late David Lynch come to mind when watching it. Yet, Ana Lily Amirpour forges her own path, where vengeance is silent, bites are metaphorical, and nights are infinitely beautiful.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) by Ana Lily Amirpour, available on DVD and VOD.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
With its long title, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) by Ariane Louis-Seize instantly evokes a bubble of morbid poetry. The Quebec film follows a young vegetarian vampire-in-training experiencing an identity crisis. Her unease meets that of a suicidal teenager she encounters. From that, a strange form of love begins to blossom. The gentle, minimalist direction contrasts with the gravity of the themes – solitude, chosen death, guilt. It’s never heavy, always light, often funny. A true breath of nocturnal air, oscillating between coming-of-age story and bittersweet gothic tale.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) by Ariane Louis-Seize, available on DVD and VOD.
Thirst by Park Chan-wook
In Thirst (2009), Park Chan-wook fuses Christian tragedy with sexual urges and dark satire. In this Korean twist of the vampire myth, a priest infected during a medical experiment becomes a dark creature. From then on, his faith, desire, and guilt violently collide. Park Chan-wook’s style is, as always, spectacular and unpredictable. He blends off-kilter framing, bursts of dark humour, eruptions of violence, and heavy silences to compose a disturbing, yet mesmerizing movie. What does this film interrogate? Morality, bodies, sin. In other words, everything that the figure of the vampire has long represented, but with renewed enthusiasm here.
Thirst (2009) by Park Chan-wook, available on MUBI.
