The Automatik

“Just sit back and let the vampire do all the work.”

Shadow of the Vampire is a film student’s dream come true. Not only is it based on the amazing and very influential German vampire film, Nosferatu, it takes the concept of self-reflexivity to new and creepy levels.

From its ominous opening to its intense and disturbing ending, the film consistently evokes Weimar-era German cinema, and that is no easy task. And, like all good films about film, it exposes the artifice of the medium. Such is the source of much of the film’s humor, in fact, much of it is at the expense of the character of F.W. Murnau, the real-life director of Nosferatu.

I’m sure that many reviews of this movie will address Willem Dafoe’s outstanding performance, and with good reason. He is unbelievably nasty and convincing as Count Orlock. Perhaps he is physically more grotesque than John Malkovich as Murnau, but the two are merely flip sides of a coin. This is where the German-ness of the movie really bleeds through the celluloid: the idea of the double. It’s the kind of concept that is obvious, but not too much so; the kind of concept that makes you want to watch the movie again so you can see it through those glasses.

The most satisfying aspect of this movie, and of Nosferatu as well, is that it seems to undo Anne Rice’s entire career by successfully de-glamorizing the vampire. After all, a vampire is a walking corpse that feeds on the living. The horror of it is that its victims are seduced by the vampire’s lust for blood and nothing more. Succumbing to its will has nothing to do with long, luxurious hair, high cheekbones, or a finely chiseled chest. It would be easy to see why someone would fall for Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, or Gary Oldman. But for someone to be inexplicably drawn to a zombie that exudes the stench of putrefying flesh is not the stuff of which Harlequin romances are made. It’s not love and it’s not sex, it’s the supernatural, which is ultimately more thrilling and powerful than both.