My top ten vampire movies

Here are my top ten vampire movies, in no particular order! It was so hard to choose exactly ten! These are the vampire movies that I can watch over and over again forever.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Beautiful, dark. Make sure to watch the Swedish version, and make sure you’re watching it with the good subtitles instead of the bad ones! This is crucial! Info about that here.

Daybreakers (2009)

A really intriguing twist on the vampire genre; everyone’s a vampire, they’ve adapted the world to accommodate them, and there’s a critical blood shortage, causing some vamps to be more monstrous than others.

The Lost Boys (1987)

A timeless classic from my youth. When I was twelve there was nothing cooler in the world than this gang of rocker vamps.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

A dark and clever fictionalization of the making of Nosferatu, where only the director knows that the lead actor is a real vampire, and he tries to get his film made while crew members keep disappearing.

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

It might be a little corny, but I still love this movie; amazing clothes, amazing locations, all the romance and sadness and dark poetry that I love about vampires.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

A work of art, and my favorite adaption of the novel. Visually one of the most striking and beautiful films I’ve ever seen, with some of the strangest and most brilliant practical effects. I hear people saying this one is cheesy but I still really love it.

Stake Land (2010)

A very compelling, gritty post-apocalytpic survival movie that happens to be about vampires. Everything The Walking Dead does wrong, Stake Land does right.

Dracula (1931)

The original! Iconic in so many ways. Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian accent has influenced the way we imagine Dracula’s voice for over eighty years. Bonus points if you know where the Dracula-hiding-his-face-behind-the-cape came from; it wasn’t this movie!

Nosferatu (1922)

The original before the original. A hundred years later Hollywood has still never produced anything creepier than that first glimpse of Count Orlok.

Drácula (1931)

If you haven’t heard of the Spanish version of Dracula (often simply referred to as “Spanish Dracula”), I urge you to check it out! It was filmed at the same time as the classic Bela Lugosi version, using the same locations and sets and an all Spanish-speaking cast. It has an arguably creepier, more intense tone and I love it. You can read more about the fascinating history of this fim on Wikipedia.

Honorable mentions:

Only Lovers Left Alive: I love the style and ambiance of this movie, but I found it frustrating for a few reasons; it’s also not remotely a horror film, which is a little disappointing. Check out my blog post about one of the main vampire’s wall of portraits.

The recent Fright Night remake is great fun and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Midnight Son: Probably the most realistic, serious portrayal I’ve ever seen of the experience of becoming a vampire and figuring things out.

The first season of True Blood was really interesting and smart, but it really goes downhill from there.

Good ol’ Subspecies doesn’t hold up well at all, but it has a special place in my heart because I loved it as a teenager and because they actually filmed the thing in Transylvania.

Night Watch/Day Watch: The first few scenes of Night Watch (the armies on the bridge, and the Night Watch folks confronting the old witch lady) totally blew my mind and I wanted to love these movies, but after that point they just felt like they dragged and got less and less interesting. Still, some interesting stuff!

I’d love to hear any suggestions you have, or even your own top-whatever lists!