I was originally going to ask: Which vampire movie is more historically inaccurate, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or... And then I realized I couldn't think of any other vampire movie that actually tries to pretend it's taking place in the "real world" like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I mean, any inclusion of vampires immediately makes a movie a fantasy, but are there any other vampire movies that attempt to include actual historical events? I know there are vampire movies set in "The West" or in "World War II" but I can't think of any that actually point to exact dates/events like this one.

Anyway, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn't that bad of a movie. For the most part, it's a fun movie about hunting vampires in the 1800s. The only real problems arise when it tries to shoe-horn aspects of Abraham Lincoln's real life into the narrative. It drags the movie to a halt. I know that's the whole gimmick behind this movie, but it's the weakest part. If this movie was jus

This is a preview of an upcoming film, cross-posted from [email protected]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/27115924

The story of 15th century Prince Vladimir (Caleb Landry Jones) who curses God following the death of his beloved wife (Zoë Bleu Sidel) and is turned into a vampire. Later, in 19th century London, he discovers his wife’s doppelgänger and dooms himself by pursuing her.

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1246049-dracula-a-love-tale

Dracula 2000 is a strange movie. The cast was made up of big names at the time, with Gerard Butler, Jonny Lee Miller, Christopher Plummer, Omar Epps, Nathan Fillion, Jeri Ryan, and the pop singer Vitamin C. Those might not be "A-list" names, but they're all pretty well known. Also, I really liked the reveal in this movie that Dracula was actually ::: spoiler spoiler Judas Iscariot ::: which made for interesting explanations of standard vampire lore like: ::: spoiler spoiler hatred of Christianity specifically (not just all religion) ::: and ::: spoiler spoiler aversion to silver ::: Those were really cool ideas and a fun twist on vampire lore.

And yet, there's something about this movie that just feels off. Maybe it's the writing, but most of this movie feels like a B-movie horror despite the wide theatrical release and (relatively) big name cast. I still really enjoy the movie, but I can see its flaws and wouldn't argue with anyone who didn't enjoy it.

Oddly enough, despite

Daydreamers doesn’t stray too far from vampire movie narratives we’ve seen before; there are warring clans of bloodsuckers, a brother versus brother face-off, and visits to flashy clubs stuffed with fang-faced partiers. But it’s one of very few vampire movies to come from Vietnam, which makes it a curiosity worth seeking out. And once you start watching, Daydreamers‘ stylish execution and ridiculously good-looking cast just might hook you in.

Daydreamers opens in select theaters May 2; it’ll hit all the major VOD platforms June 3.

Here's a trailer.

In the 1930s, Universal Pictures made a bunch of movies starring horror monsters from classic novels. Movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy. Universal milked those characters for all they were worth, to the point that they started showing up in weirder and wackier things like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein all the way to Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Obviously this had diminishing returns. By the 1950s, Universal finally stopped throwing those characters at anything they could (and after Abbot and Costello had "met" pretty much all of them).

Anyway, in the 2010s the Marvel Cinematic Universe was basically printing money so Universal decided

John Carpenter's Vampires doesn't have a very complicated plot, but it doesn't really need one. It was written and directed by John Carpenter and he knows what he's doing.

The movie is about a group of vampire hunters just... hunting vampires. This is a "modern day" vampire movie though (where "modern day" is 1998) so the hunters use the tools available at the time. You can tell they thought a lot about how to effectively kill a vampire in today's world without magical objects. There are nice little touches like the characters putting on chain-mail neck-guards before entering a vampire nest to prevent bites.

Of course, there is a plot here. A "master" vampire has a plan to perform some ritual which should give him the ability to walk in the daylight. And he needs the main character for that ritual. That leads me to my main complaint about this movie. James Woods is the main character and head vampire hunter and there's just something about him in this movie that I don't lik

Look, I'm not going to argue with anyone who says this is a bad movie. But that doesn't stop it from being fun. Just turn off your brain and enjoy it.

There's a movie from 2003 called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (yes, yes, I know it was a graphic novel first). That movie took a bunch of fictional characters (Tom Sawyer, Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray) and throws them into a wacky action-adventure movie. Van Helsing does something similar but uses horror monsters like the Wolfman, Frankenstein's monster, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Dracula to make a wacky action-adventure movie. It makes no sense, and that's perfectly fine. At least it's a more fun mash-up of horror movie monsters than The Monster Squad. You might have some nostalgia for The Monster Squad but I'd argue that Van Helsing has aged much better than it.

Anyway, the plot is almost a

I won't say Suck is a masterpiece, but it's a surprisingly fun movie. It also has quite a few big names considering it's a small indie release. Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Moby, Dave Foley, Malcolm McDowell... a lot of cameos.

The movie is about a group of friends trying to start a band and they... suck (a movie title with double meanings!). One of the band members gets turned into a vampire and suddenly the band starts getting some success, so the rest of the band decides to become vampires too. It's pretty ridiculous. As I said, the movie isn't great, but it's pretty fun.

Here's a trailer. You can watch it right now on Tubi.

Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she’s too sensitive to kill! When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply, Sasha’s life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teenager with suicidal tendencies who is willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul’s last wishes before day breaks.

Apparently coming to Shudder on February 10. Here's a trailer.

Day Shift is a fun, dumb action movie about vampire hunters. It's fully enjoyable. It stars Jamie Foxx as the main character vampire hunter who inadvertently gets Dave Franco as an apprentice. I think Dave Franco is an odd casting choice since his character is supposed to be a cowardly wimp, but he pulls it off pretty well.

However, my main gripe with the movie is that the biggest badass, most famous vampire hunter around is played by Snoop Dogg... dressed as a cowboy. And that just pushes my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point:

Seriously, keep the character the exact same but cast Idris Elba in the role and I'm all in:

But Snoop Dogg? He's just so lanky and scrawny I can't take him seriously as a badass

30 Days of Night has a brilliant premise. It takes place in an Alaskan town north of the Arctic Circle where, during winter, it goes 30 days without the sun ever rising. So a perfect place for vampires to move in and not have to worry about daylight for a while.

While I love the idea of the movie, I don't think they executed it very well. The movie is a little less than 2 hours long and the way they edited it, this could have easily taken place in a single night. That is, I don't feel like a month is passing for these characters when watching the movie. I don't know if they needed more montages or scenes where nothing happened, but things move along at a quick enough pace that it doesn't feel like these characters are spending 30 straight days in fear of their lives.

The vampires themselves are fantastic, both in the way they look and the way they act. So I don't think the movie really does anything wrong. It's just that I think this would've worked better as a TV series. O

In 2002, if you had asked me who my favorite bands were I would've said Linkin Park, Static-X, Orgy, Korn, and Disturbed. So finding out there was a movie soundtrack where Jonathan Davis of Korn wrote a bunch of songs about vampires and got the lead singers of Linkin Park, Static-X, Orgy, and Disturbed to sing those songs? I was ecstatic. I loved everything about it. And Marilyn Manson was there too... that's fine.

Apparently the original plan was for Jonathan Davis to sing all of the songs on the soundtrack but his contract with Sony prevented him from providing vocals on another label's release. Since the movie was distributed by Warner Bros, the soundtrack was released on Warner Music. So while Jonathan Davis' vocals are in the movie, they aren't on the soundtrack. And I've listened to the soundtrack so many times that hearing Jonathan Davis' voice in the movie is just... weird. It sounds wrong.

Oh yeah, there's a movie associated with this soundtrack. It's fine. I don't

I'm trying to kickstart this community by posting various vampire movies; some obscure, some classics. This is definitely a classic. To the point that I don't know what else to say about it. It's great, go watch it. It makes being a vampire fun and exciting (not just old aristocrats in castles!) while also having kids going on an adventure (Corey Feldman and Corey Haim at their peak). The effects are perfectly 80s, the dialogue is perfectly 80s, the action is perfectly 80s. I don't know what else to say if you haven't seen it. Here's a trailer.

I've watched a lot of random old/bad horror movies on Prime Video, to the point that Prime now recommends even more old/bad horror movies to me. I guess the algorithm is working. Anyway, Prime suggested Subspecies to me and the cover looked like a perfectly bad horror movie so I gave it a try. And it was a fun vampire movie; I really enjoyed it. Not a "good" movie of course, but a "fun" movie. So then Prime suggested I watch Subspecies 2. So I did. And then Subspecies 3. And then I was hooked. I finally looked online for this series that I had never heard about in any discussion of vampire movies and found there were 6 movies, with the most recent being from 2023!

The series even has a surprisingly cohesive storyline and each movie directly leads into the next. It's primarily about a vampire named Radu who falls in love with a woman and spends 4 movies desperately trying to convince her to join him as a vampire. He doesn't want to kill her; he wants her to join him. He

I've never read any Anne Rice novels and don't really have any nostolgia for the Interview With The Vampire movie. I'll absolutely admit it's a good movie, it's just not the type of vampire story I typically enjoy. I guess I'm too low-brow and prefer vampire action/horror over the more introspective stuff. And I guess that's why I probably won't be posting anything here about Only Lovers Left Alive or Let The Right One In. I understand these are good (great?) movies, but they're not for me.

Anyway, I've heard good things about the new Interview With The Vampire TV show. I'm curious if any of you have seen it and how you'd compare it to the movie. Is it any good? What'd they do differently from the movie? Does it follow the books more closely? If you haven't seen it, here's a trailer. You can currently watch it on [Netflix](https://www.ne

I'll be honest, I had never heard of Near Dark prior to seeing James Wan's Vampire Watchlist. But then I looked up other lists of classic vampire movies and Near Dark always seemed to be there. So clearly I must've missed out.

The movie was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed the forgotten cyberpunk classic Strange Days. So even when her movies aren't popular, they still seem to find their audience. For Near Dark specifically, its popularity was hurt by being released a couple months after The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys was a more "fun" movie that made vampires at least a little appealing (in an escapist fantasy sort of way), whereas Near Dark shows how being a vampire... kinda sucks. I guess I'd say it's a more realistic take on vampires, rather than being romanticized like in The Lost Boys. I personally wouldn't call it a Neo-Western

Daybreakers is an interesting movie. There are a lot of vampire stories where some powerful vampire wants to enslave the human race and keep them as cattle. But in those stories, the vampire is always stopped before they can actually enact their plan. Daybreakers imagines the logistics involved with 95% of humanity being vampires.

You can tell the filmmakers spent a lot of time thinking about how life would be different if everyone was a vampire. If everyone on the planet would die if they saw sunlight, how would cars change? How would houses change? How would cities change? Suddenly subways become the dominant form of travel. Also, there wouldn't be enough blood to go around and now you have a food shortage.

The movie has a great cast with Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Neill. While the setting and world-building is fantastic, I think the story's plot gets a little 'deus ex machina' where the solution was a little too easy just as a way to end the movie.

Anyway, here's

I thought this was a really fun movie and a great premise. The entire movie is taken from one chapter of Bram Stoker's novel. And this was the perfect chapter to adapt because it didn't have much detail and none of the other characters from the book appear in it (and none of the characters in the chapter appear elsewhere in the book). In the chapter, Dracula's coffin travels by boat to London. When it arrives, everyone on the boat is dead. That's the entire chapter. So it gave the filmmakers a lot of room to work with.

I remember seeing an interview with the director where he compared it to the movie Alien, which had a crew trapped aboard a spaceship being slowly hunted by the alien. He wanted to make a similar movie but with the crew trapped aboard a ship being slowly hunted by Dracula. And I think it worked beautifully.

I have one nit-pick about the movie and it's in the final scene. I'm going to try using spoiler tags, although I don't think it really "spoils" the movie.

First of all, when I decided I wanted to kickstart this community by running through a bunch of classic vampire movies I didn't realize they'd all be Dracula movies. That wasn't my intent. This is supposed to be a community for general vampire content, not the All-Dracula-All-The-Time community.

Anyway, you can argue about Keanu Reeves' accent or Winona Ryder's acting but I think this is the best film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. It captures a lot of the novel while also adding some backstory to Dracula's character, which fits really well into the narrative in my opinion. 1922's Nosferatu is a creepy silent film, 1931's Dracula is iconic, but I think this movie has the most cohesive story. Here's a trailer.

The actor who played Count Orlok in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu was really creepy and weird looking. So this movie decided to play with the idea of: what if the actor himself was actually a vampire, hired to give a believable performance of a vampire in a movie?

The movie stars Wilem Dafoe as Max Schreck and John Malkovich as the movie's director, F. W. Murnau. Here's a trailer. I can never find it streaming on any of the subscription services, but you can usually pay money to rent it on services like Prime Video if you want. It's a fun movie.