By Drew Dietsch
| Published

When Nosfer hit theaters last year, it meant all the brainless, unoriginal content farmers started digging up any and every possible thing they could to try and capture those sweet SEO targets. During this time, I expected to see a maelstrom of articles dredging up Shadow of the Vampirethe 2000 film that posits the making of the original Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror involved a real vampire as its star.
Though I saw one or two churned-out bait pieces, I was surprised that I didn’t see a larger wave of reappraisal for Shadow of the Vampire hit the web in the wake of the Robert Eggers film.
And that’s a real shame because Shadow of the Vampire is the kind of flick that is begging to be rediscovered.

Shadow of the Vampire crafts a moody riff on the making of Nosfeartu: A Symphony of Horror by attempting to echo the atmospheric dread of the classic silent film. But, it’s also an outright comedy exploring the ridiculousness of the artistic process, namely the oddballs that make up a troupe of artists. Led by driven director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich), this collection of weirdos is challenged by the ultimate weirdo: Method actor Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe) as Count Orlok. The real kicker is that Schreck is an actual aging vampire who Murnau is bargaining with in order to craft the truest horror movie ever.
The premise alone is an endless font of fascinating and humorous ideas, and Shadow of the Vampire is constantly firing them off in equal measure. For every scene of Schreck acting like a goof for the movie, there is an equally strange scene where the melancholy of the character gets the spotlight. Dafoe is wonderful in the role and the fact that he also starred in Eggers’ Nosfer led me to think a lot more people would find his Nosferatu in Shadow of the Vampire.
This doesn’t seem to be the case so I hope this little article can help out on that front.

But I also recognize that Shadow of the Vampire is never going to be the kind of movie that resonates with everyone. It’s a movie more for artists than an audience, more for those who understand the obsessive nature of creation rather than just being a consumer of the final product. Add to that the film dorkery of the whole endeavor and it’s not hard to see why it’s not a movie for non-nerds.
But for those who do love stories about the addictive quality of chasing artistic truth, Shadow of the Vampire is something of a sleeper knockout. The final moments of the film are something anyone who has devoted too much of themselves to a project can understand.
If you want to hear my extended thoughts on Shadow of the Vampirecheck out the GenreVision podcast embedded above. We had a great conversation but I’ll highlight one thing from it for this piece: Shadow of the Vampire is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and there better be a 4K restoration announcement coming out sooner than later!