Underplayed Gems
The whole movie catalogue

Films and series, searchable by what they are

← Back to the shop

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Shadow of the Vampire poster
Directed by
E. Elias Merhige
Genre
drama film, horror film, vampire film
Country
United Kingdom, Luxembourg, United States
Runtime
1h 31m
Rated
R
Rating
6.7 of 10 from 686 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb

How it feels

A film crew making a silent vampire movie in the 1920s grows suspicious that their lead actor is an actual vampire. The director keeps filming as the line between fiction and reality blurs.

atmosphericcreepyslow-burndarkly comictensemetagothic

What happens

Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 horror film directed by E. Elias Merhige, written by Steven Katz, and starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. It is a fictionalized account of the making of the classic vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), directed by F. W. Murnau, during which the film crew begin to have disturbing suspicions about their lead actor, Max Schreck. The film's premise is based on an urban legend which suggests that Schreck was not an actor, but in fact a vampire himself. It borrows several techniques of silent films, including the use of intertitles to explain elided action, and iris lenses. A co-production between BBC Films and Nicolas Cage's Saturn Films, Shadow of the Vampire was shot in Luxembourg. The film received positive reviews from critics and received nominations at the 73rd Academy Awards for Best Makeup and Best Supporting Actor for Dafoe's performance. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? Tell the Catbot what you feel like watching and it picks from the whole catalogue, or browse by genre, country and year.

Lists: Korean thrillers worth the evening · Anime films beyond Studio Ghibli · Slow films for a rainy night · Horror that unsettles instead of startling · Series you can finish in a weekend · Nordic crime worth the subtitles · Good films that end in under 90 minutes · Documentaries that play like thrillers

Loading movies…

What should I watch?