The Poppies of Terra #46 - We Suck Young Blood

Happy New Year all and sundry!

I recently attended an IMAX screening of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and it proved an exhilarating experience. The screenplay by Eggers credits both the screenplay by Henrik Galeen of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 original Nosferatu as well as that film’s template, Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula; it’s fascinating to think that this new adaptation of the basic source material is bringing back to life a work first cinematically conceived over a century ago! I can’t think of any other remake released a hundred years after the original, a curious distinction that suggests the very vampiric immortality it portrays.

Yet, as expertly executed and grandly committed to its aesthetics of the Gothic and uncanny as it is, Eggers’ Nosferatu will surely not be the story’s last filmic rendering. As Philip Ball pointed out in The Modern Myths a few years ago, “Dracula has now made more than two hundred cinematic appearances, and there’s no sign of the pace slowing.” 

The Dracula figure has been used to enflesh a variety of anxieties and fixations over the decades, such as fear of disease spread through contagion, or senstivity about blood transfusions during the AIDs epidemic. Where the flesh is weak, the impaler’s mythos is strong. As Ball observes, “By drinking blood, the vampire both mimics and desecrates the Christian sacrament, thereby staving off the corruption of the flesh. (It’s surely no coincidence that only this mythical monster seems vulnerable to the crucifix and holy water.) Because modern science has rejuvenated this old anxiety about death, with its blood transfusions, tissue and organ replacement, stem cell treatments, and the ultimate whispered promise of a transhuman technological immortality, we still need the vampire as much as ever…” 

The Prince of Darkness remains a super-signifier, agile in his retreat from the light of overdetermination. Though it may be unfashionable to invoke Freud, I think the case for the Undying One embodying the id’s primal sexual voracity and bloodlust as inseparable from the superego’s confinement by social codes of conduct remains a compelling one. Shifting between the roles of insatiable exsanguinating predator and refined evening host, Dracula is the very crux of duality. No wonder he casts no reflection in a mirror–he himself already represents both sides of the coin.

Eggers’ film dramatically conveys the tragic consequences that society tends to ascribe to unbridled desire among the young and, perhaps more poignantly, to misplaced affections. In this case, they are born out of a desperate longing to connect with something greater. Careful what you wish for; if you call out long into an abyss, the abyss also calls out into you. Entangling the roles of Ellen and Count Orlok as two partners in a single, ultimately self-annihilating dance teases out strands of both agency and codependency only implied in previous versions of the story. And the film’s impeccable technical presentation, from Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography to Robin Carolan’s score, is a marvel all its own.

I think it’s clear that vampires will remain a part of popular storytelling for the conceivable future, and given the wealth of their depictions, I thought it might be fun to run down ten of my favorite movies about bloodsuckers. Herewith, in alphabetical order:

30 Days of Night – David Slade’s chronicle of terrible stirrings during the month-long polar night of Barrow, Alaska is lean, mean and nasty. The Thing consummated the marriage of snowbound isolation and paranoia. This offspring, based on a comic book series, likes to play with its food.

The Addiction – Welcome to the halls of … academia, in a black-and-white arthouse New York whose textured seediness could only be captured this richly by the once enfant terrible of urban grit himself, Abel Ferrara. From the refined to the debased, let an entrancing Lily Taylor show you the way.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – Iranian New Wave meets modernized spaghetti western in another black-and-white journey into night, crisply directed by Ana Lily Amirpour and starkly lensed by Lyle Vincent. Hossein’s on smack, and he won’t be comin’ back, won’t be comin’ back for the holidays.  

Daybreakers – Michael and Peter Spierig take the kernel of classical vampire mythology and run it through a logical, science-fictional “what-if” filter to generate this sleek, dystopian, corporatized, blue-tinted nightmare of the struggle for survival between upstairs and way, way, way downstairs. The first of three appearances by Willem Dafoe on this list.

Let the Right One In – Strains of melancholy and romance abound in Tomas Alfredson’s beautifully minimalist Swedish coming-of-age story. The colors may be muted, but the emotions are violently palpable. The best depiction of snow clad in blood. Matt Reeves’ Let Me In is a respectable remake. 

Nadja – I just held the DVD of Michael Almereyda’s Nadja in my hands to remind myself that it exists. New York, again, and more black-and-white, but this time it’s Pixelvision and a host of other experimental techniques in the service of a lucid, low-fi nightmare. Truly a mood film; somewhere between extended music video and hypnagogic flashback.

Nosferatu (1922) – Murnau has been an influence on filmmakers as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock, Tim Burton, Alex Proyas, Terrence Malick, and Werner Herzog (who made his own version of Nosferatu). This masterpiece of German Expressionism is a study in the use of camera angles, makeup design, architecture, and shadows. Max Schreck cast an indelible silhouette on the screen of our imaginations with this first, and perhaps unrivalled, performance as Count Orlok.

Nosferatu (2024) – Eggers honors his forefather with meticulously composed yet artfully restrained shots, evoking filmic vocabulary lost in the ashes of history. He elicits expressionistic rather than naturalistic performances from his ensemble that wouldn’t be out of place in a silent film. Willem Dafoe is the Van Helsing stand-in, Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, whose first name honors the 1922 film’s producer and production designer Albin Grau.

Only Lovers Left Alive – Jim Jarmusch combines lush, deep colors with a dirge-like sensibility to evoke the weight of time itself, and the supreme, playful, post-ennui romanticism of the uber-stylish creatures of night who outlive it all. Cultural connoisseurship amidst decaying landscapes never looked so glamorous. 

Shadow of the Vampire – E. Elias Merhige’s meta-take, chronicling Murnau (John Malkovich) making Nosferatu, bridges early cinema and contemporary approaches, with a desaturated color palette that likewise blurs the line between fiction and reality. A remarkable score by Dan Jones. The third and final Willem Dafoe mention, who here plays the real-life German actor Max Schreck, playing the vampire.

And for the bonus round, I’ll mention two series:

Interview with the Vampire – You might know Anne Rice’s famous novel, and you may possess vague memories of Neil Jordan’s 1994 film adaptation, but really, this new series is where it’s at. Superb domestic melodrama, high camp, coming-of-non-age yarn, and historical bodice-ripper, played with genuine pathos, literary sophistication, and magnetic performances, sprinkled with a dash of grand guignol and framed up as an investigative exposé. It’s lurid, yet sensitive. The third season has been confirmed and will likely drop sometime this year. 

Midnight Mass – Mike Flanagan’s seven-part New England Gothic miniseries is the ultimate slow burn, a fuse lit by an incantatory performance by Hamish Linklater and anchored by quietly engrossing work from Zach Gilford. Flanagan uses extremely long takes and dozen-page monologues to slowly carve open the pulsating heart of disquietude consuming the isolated Crockett Island in the midst of a Catholic revival. Faith, addiction, and mortality snake around in the darkness to the dread song of cosmic horror. A must-watch.