Happy Halloween! and why vampires are the best spooky creature subgenre in cinema
I am here to suuuuuuuck... your blood!
It’s Halloween! Aaargh! There’s so many films you could be watching this week, and I’m here to convince you why vampires are the most sublime scary supernatural creature you can indulge in.
These blood sucking sex machines are just so damn hot. Everyone wants a piece of them (almost as much as they want a piece of us). The best bit of the vampire genre is how adaptable the tropes are. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure. Opt in or out of bursting into flames in the sun, sparkling, how you get blood, if you stay in period clothing, and even if they’ve got silly Transylvanian accent. That’s why the genre doesn’t feel stale - we get to enjoy the director’s interpretation. When you think about it, it’s not even really a genre any more - they’re characters that have their legitimate place in drama, comedy, horror, and even “family friendly” films, which is kind of weird when you think about it.
I probably started with Mona the Vampire and The Little Vampire when I was a wee gal, followed by the inevitability of Twilight in my teens. I watched a few series of True Blood as a student, before finding myself by myself in a late night screening of What We Do in the Shadows at Kriterion, in one of those screenings where everyone is roaring with infectious laughter. During LAB111’s infamous Nicolas Cage season, I spent a memorable afternoon “enjoying” Vampire’s Kiss, with a performance from cage that can only be described as alarming. Most recently, I ended up at screen 4 of the EYE, at a rare English-subtitled screening of this funny little French-Canadian film about a teenage vampire who morally objects to killing. Here’s a story of the best two, and then Twilight.
What We Do In The Shadows (2014), d. Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi
New Zealand is a funny old place. Full of hobbits… and vampires.
The gold standard of vampire comedy was well and truly cemented by Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement way back in 2014. A full length version of a previous short, WWDITS is the perfect blend of absurdity, mundanity, and devastating sadness.
Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislav (Jermaine Clement), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Petyr (Ben Fransham) are four vampire flatmates living in suburban Wellington, subsiding on a diet of virgin’s blood from innocent victims lured home by a long-suffering familiar. Vampire afficionados will appreciate the historical archetype that each character embodies - Petyr’s terrifying ode to Nosferatu, Vladislav’s sexy interpretation of Gary Oldman’s Count Dracula, alongside Deacon’s origin story as a member of a Nazi vampire brigade and Viago’s dandyish nature which was based on Waitit’s mum (slay). Sure, they’re hundreds of years old and have lived throughout era defining moments of history, but they also fight over who hasn’t done the washing up. Shit gets crazy when “recent vampire” Nick moves in, as he struggles to adjust to his new life. The star of the film, however, is an IT guy called Stu, who only realised his bit part was in fact a major character at the film’s premiere. Wild.
Just as there are ecstasy pills hidden in your kid’s halloween candy, Waititi and Clement manage to sneak moments of true sincerity in between the silliness. Nick has to learn how his new eternal life works, from the frustration of not being able to eat chips any more (a fate worse than death!!), to the utter jollity of flying. Most painful of all is the realisation that he will have to watch everyone he has ever loved grow old and die.
But it’s not all doom and gloom! The film was such a hit that it spawned the FX series of the same name, which is now in its sixth and final (sob!) season, and every now and then Viago, Vladislav, and Deacon make a guest appearance (alongside an entire galaxy of stars). It’s a winning formula… six seasons and a movie!
Humanist Vampire Too Sensitive to Kill (sometimes listed as Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person) (2023), d. Ariane Louis-Seize
I stumbled across this absolute gem of a film on the Cineville listings, and by some miracle found a screening with English subtitles at the EYE. Set in Montreal, an awesome city of people who speak a really quite astonishing dialect of French, we meet teenage vampire Sasha. After a traumatic birthday party involving her family enjoying a tasty clown for dinner, Sasha becomes morally against killing people to eat, living a somewhat vegetarian lifestyle as she sucks on pouches of blood with a straw that her parents have sourced for her. Eventually, she must learn to fend for herself. After a chance meeting with Paul, a depressed and suicidal boy, they form a strange alliance to satiate their needs. It’s actually kind of adorable.
There are plenty of classic tropes employed here, from teen movies to vampire classics to that Quebecois twist that makes me wish I could just head down to the dep for a snack. Accidentally turning a total wanker into a vampire instead of just killing him, parents discovering a cookie in their teenager’s bedroom and acting like it’s a big bag of drugs, and suicide by poutine… everyone one could want from a film.
Most of all, I love how this film tackles important ethical issues and repackages them in the paranormal, allowing us to think beyond our own universe as we consider what’s right and what’s wrong. The bad news is that Humanist Vampire is almost impossible to find (and even harder to find with decent subtitles), so if you fancy watching… DM me, I know a guy.
Twilight (only the first one) (2008), d. Catherine Hardwicke
I sat Alex down to watch the world’s bluest film.
The first film of this bonkers franchise is coincidentally the only one directed by a woman. I wasn’t really a Twi-hard teenager and I didn’t have mega crushes on Edward or Jacob, but it was everywhere so I took part in the zeitgeist because, well, what else does a 14 year old girl have going on?
Even back then, my not yet developed teenage brain knew this was a deeply cringe moment in pop culture. Why the fuck are these ancient vampires choosing to go to high school? Why does she fall in love with this creep who enjoys watching her sleep? Why do they have to get married as soon as possible? In the height of my teenage antitheism, all I could think was that these idiots must be Jesus freaks.
And boom, I was right. Not only is it Christian teenage vampire romance, this is Mormon teenage vampire romance. I don’t have time to explain why I suddenly know so much about Mormons, maybe in another mega essay.
What strikes me about this film, years later, is how every action is deeply mundane, and yet is imbued with a level of meaning that only a teenager could dream up. This is probably why it appealed so much to screaming teenage girls. There’s no subtly, everything is dramatic, things escalate at breakneck speed, and the ultimate goal for the main characters is marriage and babies. It’s a pale, sickly, sparkly version of the crap young girls are taught: that their prince will come and they’ll get married and live happily every after. The romance is so incredibly overblown that it distracted everyone from noticing that Edward is a creepy stalker who likes to watch Bella sleep (call the police!). Just let her live, you geriatric sparkly freak.
And despite this… it’s so ridiculously entertaining, just not for any of the reasons Catherine Hardwicke set out to do. The drinking games that could be constructed around this. As my long suffering boyfriend with a BA in film remarked, Twilight is a “quite shonky, poorly acted, badly directed, questionably shot, quintessentially mid 00s, team drama film. 1.5 stars seems too harsh, because Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are doing the best with the material.” I genuinely think they were reading exactly what was on the script. They understood the assignment.