The leaves are falling, the sun is setting earlier, and if you live in New York City, you’re probably waking up to an incredibly arid apartment thanks to your inability to control the heat. It’s fall, and spooky season is upon us, which means it’s time to spend your nights settling in with a good scary movie. We’ve got a list of those for you to check out, as well as the best horror games of the last 20 years, but what if you’re looking for something more specific? Maybe something sexy, sensual, and sanguine? A vampire movie, perhaps?
We’ve got a collection of must-watch vampire flicks for your perusal, from ‘80s classics like The Lost Boys and Near Dark to more modern movies like Van Helsing and Queen of the Damned. There’s scary ones like 30 Days of Nights, and hilarious ones like What We Do in the Shadows. Whatever kind of vampire movie you’re looking for, we’ve got you covered. So in no particular order, here are the vampire movies you should check out ASAP.
Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is certainly not the scariest vampire movie, and possibly not the funniest, but it’s the one I can watch and rewatch, over and again, while quoting along with all its most iconic scenes in the most infuriating way possible.
It’s so wonderfully ‘80s, yet utterly timeless, a ludicrous mishmash of adult horror, Spielbergish children’s caper, and teenage metal album cover, a combination that’s clearly aimed at no one and yet perfect for everyone. This is a movie that has chilling nighttime vampiric stalking sequences and the line, “My own brother, a goddamn shit-sucking vampire! You wait ‘til mom finds out!”
While I’m not going to try to argue that this film isn’t cheesy, I am going to argue that it’s more than cheesy. That’s in large part thanks to a cast that, alongside 80s cheddar-chewers like Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, features the likes of Jason Patric, Edward Herrmann, and the always exquisite Dianne Wiest. Never mind Alex Winter, two years before anyone would hear of Bill & Ted. It’s hilariously funny, but it’s funny on purpose. It’s surprisingly creepy, but always with a wry grin. And it’s by far the most quotable vampire film ever made.
Come for the absurd way Keanu Reeves pronounces “Budapest,” stay for literally everything else. The acclaimed film from the man behind this year’s most baffling movie, Megalopolis, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a masterpiece, a supple, sensual experience that looks expensive, sounds incredible, and feels dark and dirty and downright wrong. The costumes, designed by the legendary Eiko Ishioka, are seared into my memory, from the blood-red armor that looks like musculature to the bone-white lacy collars and headpieces and the impossibly tight corsets representing the shackles of Victorian ideals.
Plus Winona Ryder is an absolute vision to behold as Mina Harker, a Victorian woman drawn to the dark (and sexy) side by Gary Oldman’s (admittedly irresistible) Dracula—we watch as those big, brown eyes that once looked upon the world with innocent curiosity mature and morph into something darker and more dangerous. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an absolute must-watch not just during spooky season, but year-round.
It’s not that vampires weren’t cool to me when I was young. They were cool, but in a kind of stuffy, old-timey way. I watched old movies about Dracula and even ventured into his realm myself in Castlevania, and so vampires, to me, were synonymous with capes and fog and remote castles in the European countryside hundreds of years ago. (And yes, I saw The Lost Boys, but while it was “fun” in a cheesy sort of way, it was too glossy and mainstream to really get me excited about the idea of modern-day bloodsuckers.) Then I saw Kathryn Bigelow’s movie Near Dark and had my entire understanding of vampires turned upside down.
Van Helsing is one of those aughts movies that is campy and silly while trying to keep a semi-straight face. Starring Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing in one of his sexiest roles ever and Kate Beckinsale as the equally sexy Anna Valerious, Van Helsing is an homage to the Universal horror movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, which is why it can sometimes feel a bit too reliant on pastiche.
While the TV show on FX has become arguably more well-known and popular than the original movie, 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows is worth checking out a decade after its release. The basic setup of the movie, like the show, is that a group of vampires live together in a house, and we watch them via a documentary camera crew as they try to navigate normal and paranormal situations including ex-lovers, werewolves, parties, and the death of a friend.
1998’s Blade gives us one of the most iconic opening scenes of all time: a hot girl drags a goofy guy through a butcher shop to the entrance of a secret club filled with writhing bodies undulating to a techno beat. Hot people make out in corners and eye the guy like he’s a lone zebra calf on an open plain and they’re a pack of lions. Suddenly, the club’s sprinkler system goes off—but instead of water, the sprinklers are spraying blood. “What’s the matter, baby?” the girl asks, her fangs bared. Just when you think this guy is going to become vamp dinner, Blade, the Daywalker, shows up.
Let The Right One In was the Swedish precursor to Matt Reeves’ horror success, Let Me In. So, are we picking Låt den rätte komma in because we’re some bunch of pretentious film snobs? Nope, it’s because I’ve seen this version, but never got around to the U.S. follow-up. Although it seems likely you’d do well to watch either, or both.
Yes, the television series of the same name based on the same book by Anne Rice is just as good as (if not better than) this Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise film, but you absolutely must watch this movie first. Not only does it have two of the most iconic modern actors playing a bitchy gay vampire couple wearing more makeup than I do for a night at the club, but a baby-faced Kirsten Dunst will wow you as a young girl perpetually frozen in adolescence. It’s campy, it’s lush, it’s absurd—it’s Anne Rice, baby.
One time I convinced a friend of mine to sit down and watch From Dusk Till Dawn with me and they had no idea what the movie was about. For the first 30 or so minutes, they were enjoying the dark story of two criminals kidnapping a family and stealing their RV to make their escape to Mexico. And then, after stopping at a large strip club/bar, vampires showed up and my friend was shocked, but also extremely excited.
If you’re into nu-metal and the late, great Aaliyah, then you’re into Queen of the Damned. This is another one of the movies on this list that isn’t necessarily good but it is an important entry into the lexicon of vampire cinema. It follows iconic vampire Lestat (Stuart Townsend), a rock star in the modern day whose nu-metal concert wakes up Akasha (Aaliyah), the ancient queen of vampires who wants to make him her king consort. It’s based on a book in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series (and is technically a sequel to Interview), and it is as horny and absurd as all good vampire movies should be.
If “the first Iranian vampire Western” doesn’t pique your interest, I fear nothing will. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a beautiful subversion of the traditional life of a woman in Iran—a young vampire woman with a taste for bad men (literally) can freely roam the streets at night, because she is the danger in the dark. She begins to interfere in the life of a young man struggling to take care of his addict father who has gotten them into a pickle with a local drug dealer—the more she interferes, the more it’s clear that she’s no typical woman, but does that matter? The film, clearly inspired by Sergio Leone and spaghetti Westerns as well as the original Nosferatu, is beautifully shot and well-acted, taking the familiar genres and turning them upside down and inside out by melding them with a bold, graphic novel-esque visual style.
30 Days of Night (based on the comic book series of the same name) is intense and relentless—as intense as it must be to face a 30-day-long polar night when you’re town is being attacked by vampires, I suppose. That’s the premise of the 2007 horror film, directed by David Slade and starring Josh Hartnett as the sheriff of the small, snowy town of Barrow, which is its own character in this film.
If you’ve got some extra spare time over an upcoming weekend, you should absolutely double feature 1985’s Fright Night and the 2011 remake starring Colin Farrell. In both films, a teenager believes his new next-door neighbor is a vampire and turns to an actor who played a vampire hunter to help him oust the bastard. The original is more campy and absurd thanks to its reliance on practical effects and the overall ‘80s-ness of it all, but the second has both Farrell and the late Anton Yelchin, so it’s worth a watch. Try them back-to-back and see which one is your fave.
