This is a topic I have been excited about since I first looked at the syllabus for this course. It is finally time to give my thoughts on vampire movies. I have been very interested in anything vampire since I was a kid. This all started when my dad showed me The Lost Boys when I was a kid. I was honestly surprised that film was not involved in this course, but there were still excellent films we were required to watch for this topic. The three films I viewed for this section were Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987), Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2014), and my personal favorite Taika Waititi’s What We Do In The Shadows (2014). In this blog entry I will go over my thoughts on each of the films and the deeper meaning behind them.
All three of these films were very different from one another, but they all had a few deeper similarities. They of course all included the historic monster called the vampire, but the more underlying similarity is there thirst for blood. They require human blood to stay alive, but in these films it is like a drug that they are addicted too. They will do everything they can to get their next taste of blood. In Only Lovers Left Alive the vampires are seen drinking blood and falling back as if they had just done heroin or something similar to that. In Near Dark they murder and drink as much blood as they can, this is what drives their lives. Each night when they wake up, their only thought is about when they are going to get their next meal. This is not as relevant in What We Do In The Shadows but they still require human blood to live just like any other vampire movie. The three main vampires seem to take joy in killing and drinking the blood of humans though.
Now let’s get to my thoughts on all three of the films. As I mentioned before, my favorite one out of the three was What We Do In The Shadows. It was not at all a horror film, but it had creatures that are typically in horror movies like vampires, zombies, and werwolves. This was one of the funniest films I have ever seen. Just to see stupid vampires live their lives with all of the restrictions a vampire has like having to be invited everywhere they go and having to avoid the sunlight. I also loved that it was made as if it was a documentary. This movie was amazing and it will go down as one of my all time favorites.
Near Dark was also a great film in my eyes. It had a great story, and surprisingly a happy ending. This film had something happen that I had never seen in any vampire film. They actually cured a vampire. They successfully turned Caleb and Mae back human by doing a blood transfusion. The most surprising thing was that there was a happy ending. This is very rare in horror films, and I was glad to see Caleb and Mae end up together as humans.
I really enjoyed Near Dark and What We Do In The Shadows, but I did not like Only Lovers Left Alive. It was just about a depressed vampire who has been alive so long that he doesn’t like living anymore. I thought this film had great potential to be an excellent movie because it had a great cast, but it just seemed like there was no big conflict and climax. The only conflict was when Eva visited and killed Adam’s friend/helper. It was just a really slow film that I personally thought could have been much more exciting. Vampire films are one of my favorite types of movies, and I really enjoyed two of the three films.