The Twilight Saga (2008-2012)

In the modern time, there are many great vampire films comes out and attract lots of audience. One of the famous films The Twilight Saga adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s novel has become the most popular vampire film in recent years and draws wide attention.

The film style of The Twilight Saga is an innovation to traditional vampire films. It describes a romantic love story between a teenager girl Bella and the handsome vampire Edward, which is much different from early vampire films that full of horror and gloomy scenes. The film subverts the former vampire images to a large extent not only in appearance but also their characters, which we can also find small tendency in some earlier works.

Edward and his family are vampires who live in peace with human. He is controlling his desire to feed on Bella when they encounter at school. With the development of their relationship, Edward falls in love with Bella and he protects her from the attack of hostile vampires. The plots of The Twilight Saga mainly revolve around the love between vampire and human, which make the vampire image more sentient and humanized. 

Interview with the Vampire (two)

I think the theme in the film Interview with the Vampire is about humanity, although the leading roles are vampires, and it makes the films impressive with strong emotional power. The vampires have permanent life and forever young appearance, but they are tired with unchanged life and reflecting the meaning they exist. Such as the young girl Claudia, she longs for love and the normal life as a human, since her appearance will never change as a vampire. And as for Louis, his contradiction and passiveness to his love to Claudia and Lestat, and his struggle and hesitate to be more like human or vampire…All these elements make the film conveys a deep thinking and exploration to humanity.

In addition, the film Interview with the Vampire is considered as classic and very popular not only because of the great filmmaking and impressive theme, but also the image of vampires are changed from evil and horrible into handsome, charming, and more human-like (though most of them still have selfish and cruel nature). This film creates a new character image of vampire and achieves success, which sets a good example and has great influences to the modern vampire films. 

Interview with the Vampire (one)

Interview with the Vampire is also a classical vampire film made in 1994 in America, which is adapted from Anne Rice’s novel. The film is about the story recalled by the protagonist Louis de Pointe du Lac, who is a vampire that still alive in the modern day.  

Louis’ story happened in the 18^th century in Louisiana. He was a manor owner who felt despaired to life after the deaths of his wife and child, then he met a vampire named Lestat de Lioncourt and was transformed by him. In the film, Louis is a vampire who’s almost a positive character that maintains the humanity. He hates Lestat as well as himself as a vampire, and he tries to keep his humanity and represses desires to blood and killing. The other vampires in the firm admire him because of his kind, self-control, humanity, as well as his struggle and sorrow as a vampire. However, Louis is hesitant and passive towards admire and love, he thinks he cannot control his fate and he is unclear to his feeling of love. The only thing that he insists in is keeping his humanity, and his only defiance and killing is for the revenge for Claudia at the end. So, from looking at a vampire character like Louis, we can also find some human nature inside him.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

“Dracula”, the name of the most famous vampire in the history, comes from the earliest vampire novel Dracula written by Irish writer Bram Stoker in 1897. Dracula is the origin of the vampire in medieval Europe which is the Dark Age. “Dracula” means “devil” in Romanian, he is a frightening character who pierces Jesus on the cross, gives his soul to devil and becomes an immortal vampire who feeds on human blood.

The image of Dracula is horrible in the book, as well as the film Nosferatu adapted from it. However, in another firm Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is also adapted from the novel Dracula in 1992, the image of vampire Dracula has changed a lot. The film technique used in this film is much developed. Since Nosferatu is a black-and-white silent film with orchestral music and explain text, the vampire character in Bram Stoker's Dracula is shaped more vivid. Also, in this film, the element of love is emphasized, which makes evil Court Dracula has a pitiful side. The vampire image becomes more flesh-and-blood, they questions theocracy and religious authority, desires horror and immortality, and even pursues the truly love. Although there are still much violence with hidden desires conveys in the film, the vampire is not such an unpleasant role any more than Nosferatu. At the end of film, Dracula is forgiven and rests in peace. As a sad story, it is a kind of comforting ending to both Dracula and audience.

Nosferatu— Analysis of Vampire Character

Nosferatu is a first horror film depicting the vampire in the film history in 1922.  It is the German expressionist film by F.W. Murnau which shows a distinctive personal style. This famous film shapes the classical or the original image of vampire, and also provides inspiration for the later vampire films.

In this film, the main character Thomas Hutter is a secretary of an auction company lives in the fictitious German city of Wisborg. His employer sends him to Transylvania to visit a new client named Count Orlok. Hutter’s travel to Orlok’s castle is filled with evil sign which makes him frightened. When he arrives at the destination and sees Orlok, he finds Orlok is also very strange both in appearance and behaviors. He has long slender fingers, pale face and less hair. He also sleeps in the coffin in a crypt. When he discovers that Orlok is a vampire and returns to the hometown, he finds people there are already in danger. The town is stricken with panic and plague caused by Orlok.

Although finally the evil Orlok is killed by clever people, and the last scene in the film shows Count Orlok's ruined castle in the Carpathian Mountains, which symbolize the end of Count Orlok's reign of terror, still the whole film gives me an impressive feeling of fear because of the strange scene and gruesome atmosphere it created. I think the biggest highlight in this film is the fear effect, which shows the evil and violent characteristic of vampire, and also the film is successful because of creativity.

Purpose Statement Draft

Introduction:

During the long history of the development of world’s movies, vampire movies as a fresh and fancy type of movies always attracts much attention and being more and more popular in the modern movie. Such as the latest famous vampire movies The Twilight Saga adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s novel draws the numerous audiences and achieves great success. However, the vampire movies in today’s world are much different from the early ones, not only in the movie styles and appearance of characters, but also the inside meaning it wants to express. Therefore, by watching the vampire movies in different periods, it is worthy to explore what are the changes from early to modern vampire movies and what these changes mean.

Purpose statement:

The purpose of this study will be to explore the changes of different period vampire movies (from Nosferatu 1922 to Twilight present) and what these changes mean.

Central question:

What are the changes from early to modern vampire movies and what do these changes mean?

Sub-questions:

What are the differences of social background and audiences in different period of vampire movies? How do they change the movies?

How the movies have different representations of vampires and what does it mean?