There’s no part of the horror genre that I love more than a good old-fashioned monster flick or creature feature, and this has always been reflected the strongest by a deep love of vampires. If a film or television series includes a vampire, I am automatically interested in watching it, a character trait that has been inside of me for as long as I can remember, as one of my earliest cinematic memories comes from The Little Vampire. My fascination with vampires continued throughout my childhood, and was later ignited by new releases such as What We Do in the Shadows — no matter what the horror genre throws my way, I always find myself wanting to return to vampires. While I’ve loved many different vampires during my time on Earth so far, film and television releases of the last five years have solidified one opinion of mine: vampires are at their best when they are truly horrifying, and the uglier they are, the better.
That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the Laszlo Cravensworths and Astarions of the vampire world, and like anyone else that appreciates Van Helsing, I am not immune to Dracula’s Brides. But when it comes to utilizing vampires to inspire the key emotion they’ve always been known for — fear — this is done best in the horror genre when heartthrobs are thrown aside in favor of the horrifying. The most impactful vampires of the 2020s have been those that were constructed practically, with makeup and prosthetics that create a monster who doesn’t just say they’re monstrous, they look it. Often, having a vampire who physically represents the word “monster” in full allows for behaviors that are more animalistic and primal in nature, and without a pretty face to hide behind it can be harder for audiences to humanize the actions carried out on the screen.
Heart-Pounding & Harder to Humanize
Circling back to 2004’s Van Helsing, while I was simply entirely too young to be watching the film during its release year, it is nonetheless the first vampire film I have any recollection of watching with a truly terrifying vampire to look at. While Richard Roxburgh‘s Count Dracula is primarily seen with a conventionally attractive look about him, the climax of the film allows him to show his true colors to the audience. Taking on a computer-generated, monstrous form somewhere between a man and a bat, Dracula, in those moments, opened my eyes to the potential vampires had to be scary, even though he wasn’t enough to scare me — only to ignite my interest in what vampires could have to offer. In the following years, I would get to experience a genuine fear of a vampire in 2009 when I saw the first example of what a starving vampire becomes when the human blood supply is running out in Daybreakers. While, yes, the film is mostly full of vampires that look like normal humans aside from their teeth and eyes, when they begin to starve and mutate into a monster worthy of the name, it is the moment I feel I decided that truly horrifying vampires are the vampires for me.
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When the vampire that is lurking in the shadows and hunting for their next meal emerges, and there’s no pretty face presented to the audience, that’s often enough to get blood pumping out of adrenaline and fear. Vampires have always had physical traits assigned to them that stem from a misunderstanding and fear of what death does to the human body after a natural burial since their earliest days in folklore, such as paperlike skin with tones of decay under the bloated physique, elongated nails and teeth, and unnaturally light eyes. So seeing modern depictions of these monsters honor that traditional depiction of death and decay in the horror genre always just feels right. Plus, even the first vampire film, Nosferatu, features a physical representation of Count Orlok that is still enough to send a shiver down one’s spine.
When a vampire is carrying out their actions and sating their thirst, it’s harder to put human emotions and rationale to a figure that doesn’t quite look human anymore. When the vampires on the screen are a reflection of the word ‘monster’, it also typically allows for their writer to assign behaviors to them that make it harder not to classify the figure as a monster outright. If the vampire looks physically monstrous, audiences expect monstrous behavior, and this is often delivered through the script. The more monstrous the vampire looks, the more unhinged they are often allowed to become.
Bottom Line, Practical Monsters Have My Heart
Overall, I think the horror genre is always best delivered with practical effects, and vampires are no exception. In the last five years in particular, audiences have been treated to several shining examples of how disgusting and horrifying a vampire can be when practical makeup and prosthetics are applied to an actor to create the monster we see on screen. Mike Flanagan‘s Midnight Mass is what, in my opinion, heralded in this period of favor toward scary vampire designs in the horror genre, despite the fact the series cleverly never uses the word “vampire” throughout its runtime. Portrayed by Quinton Boisclair, the “Angel” of Midnight Mass is primarily delivered practically, with exceptions made for visual effects in scenes where the creature is flying. With no purely human traits to hide behind, the Angel has a lot of scares to offer in his scenes. From the caves where Monsigneur Pruitt first discovers him to his outstretched wings before the Crockett Island congregation during Easter Mass, the Angel is a sight to behold. The monstrous has continued up to this year, with The Last Voyage of the Demeter offering a truly monstrous look at Count Dracula that only resembles a man in the most uncanny of ways, and to Count Orlok in Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu, whose flesh was so decayed and rotted that not only was Bill Skarsgård wearing prosthetics, he was wearing maggots.
The vampires mentioned above are all consistently referenced in audience and critic reviews for the fear they inspire and the impact they have on viewers, so I don’t exactly think I’m alone when I say that uglier, scarier representations of vampires are what is best for vampire releases within the horror genre. The scariest examples of vampires in the horror genre are the ones that lean into a monstrous appearance, and given that the genre seems to be embracing this, I desperately hope that continues to be the case going forward.
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