Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Aditya G

  
  Year 1921: German director Frederich Wilhelm Murnau set out to make a film on Bram Stoker's famous Vampire fiction, "Dracula". He however failed to acquire the rights to use the novel's story. Unwilling to give up on the project, Murnau made a few changes here… More
  Year 1921: German director Frederich Wilhelm Murnau set out to make a film on Bram Stoker's famous Vampire fiction, "Dracula". He however failed to acquire the rights to use the novel's story. Unwilling to give up on the project, Murnau made a few changes here and there including the characters' names. Notably, Count "Dracula" became "Count Orlock"! For the role of Orlock, he hired a Max Schreck, an actor, who was usually aloof on the sets. Schreck went on to deliver one of the most realistic and famous performances of his career as Count Orlock, while Murnau established himself as a great director who made one of the finest adaptations of Stoker's novel, widely regarded as the best existing film adaption, that is "Nosferatu" (1922). They say, Shreck was totally dedicated to his character/role and that he played it very believably! Furthermore, his contemporaries have reported that Shreck was a loner and lived in a remote world and liked walking through dark forests! All these mannerisms of his had supposedly given rise to an Urban Legend that Schreck was actually a vampire!! Year 2000: Screenwriter Steven Katz and Director E. Elias Merhige decide to take this Urban Legend a few steps further by basing their own vampire movie on it! "Shadow of the Vampire" tells a fictionalized story of the ambitious but troubled production of Murnau's silent horror masterpiece, "Nosferatu". John Malkovich stars as F. W. Murnau, who along with his crew starts the filming process. The crew, even the producer Albin Grau (Udo Kier) are unaware about who's going to play the central character of Count Orlock. They are then told that his name is Max Schreck, who has been a stage actor with the Reinhold Company. Murnau states that Schreck likes to stay in character and will only appear in full make-up and he insists on shooting only at night. He has already reached Slovakia where they plan to shoot most of the film, in order to get a feel of the air! While an initial meeting with Schreck (Willem Dafoe) clearly brings about a sense of unnerving discomfort to some of the crew, others commend the great manner in which he stays in character and looks and behaves as frightening as his character! The chosen location is an isolated one, yet the orthodox locals seem to give the director a problem. Meanwhile, Schreck keeps making demands of his own and becomes increasingly difficult for Murnau. Cameraman Wolfgang Mueller suffers from some kind of a breakdown; he has to be replaced by Fritz Arno Wagner (Cary Elwes) who is specially flown in. Amidst all the problems associated and the rest of the crew's growing suspicion and fear about the true identity of Schreck, Murnau makes desperate attempts to finish his project... While the idea of "Shadow of the Vampire" is interesting and the director has roped in two of the film biz's extremely talented actors, John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, somehow something is still missing somewhere! Now, we are given that the film's story is a "fictionalized" account. In that case, the screenwriter could have taken still more liberties to pack some more meat in this venture. This DOES NOT mean that they should've resorted to the increasingly boring, usual cheap thrills/gimmicks which most horror movies are rife with nowadays. Then again, perhaps it is the limitation of the script then...maybe there was no way in which more substance could be added to the film without it treading the oft-trodden path of triteness! In fact the director does us a big favour by keeping it subtle and doesn't add too much gore/shocks/jolts from out of nowhere/screams, etc. So, almost casually, Dafoe's character demonstrates how he is "living" the character, to two of the crew members, Albin and Henrik (John Aden Gillet), the screenwriter of Murnau's film, in a particularly important scene in the film. The director relies on the atmosphere, then, of the set that he uses, the lighting arrangement, the dark ruins where he does the filming, and Willem Dafoe's Max Schreck character amongst other things to invoke a feeling of terror. There are some clever scenes which come across as slightly funny as well as terrifying at the same time! The director also pays homage to the silent film era by use of inter-tiles in the narrative, as well as the iris shot. He intersperses footage from the original "Nosferatu" with the scenes that his Murnau character shoots in this film. It is almost difficult to tell the original footage from the one filmed in the film! Dan Jones provides an adequately chilling background score and complements the unsettling atmosphere created by Merhige. "Shadow of the Vampire" then mostly belongs to its two main actors, Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich. While Malkovich delivers a class act as F. W. Murnau, a film-maker who is hellbent on finishing his big film without any compromise, Willem Dafoe almost outdoes the late Max Schreck with his spoof-like rendition of Max Schreck/Count Orlock! It is a Godly act worth a standing ovation as his Max Schreck character in this film mirrors the late Max Schreck's own dedication to the role of Orlock, with Dafoe being almost unrecognizable as we know him and delivering a knock-out performance. He definitely deserved to win the Oscar he was nominated for. Watch him in this and you will know what "getting into the skin of the character" actually means! If only the film were as worthy of praise as the lead performance in it, we would probably have a vampire masterpiece with one of the most original premises in the genre. This is a result of keeping things subtle, though, so it is more like an inevitable restriction on the script! Regardless, "Shadow of the Vampire" is a decent film and worth a watch for some of the reasons mentioned above and if those reasons aren't good enough for you, then you can certainly depend on Willem Dafoe to be the sole reason to check it out.

• Tim S

  
  Quirky and well acted but a bit slow at times.

• Conner R

  
  Willem Dafoe's deranged performance as Max Shreck is completely worth this movie. However, it is actually a very good movie in itself. I loved the remade shots of Nosferatu, they are incredibly dead on. While the filming style is a little sub-par, it is a minor drawback.

• Morgan S

  
  Willem Dafoe is sooo CREEPY!! So much like the original...John Malkovich, who I am usually on the fece on, I like...I was also pleasenty surprised to see Cary Elwes. I always enjoy him. OO THAT willem Dafoe..as in Boondock Saints lol.

• Arash X

  
  Very interesting premise but hasn't executed very well & you can feel that something's missing specially near the end, Dafoe rules in this

• Fernando Rafael Q

  
  A complete disappointment. SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE is an exercise in ridiculousness, from the terrible script to the caricaturesque performances. Utter waste of time, even at 92 minutes.

• Tsubaki S

  
  Interesting approach to the material, Dafoe truly impresses here.

• Drew S

  
  I REVIEWED THIS SHIT TWICE and it didn't save either time. Fucking go to hell, Flixster. Here are two things I liked about the movie that I copied from a totally different post I made because I'm lazy and I don't feel like writing about it anymore. + Atmosphere. This… More
  I REVIEWED THIS SHIT TWICE and it didn't save either time. Fucking go to hell, Flixster. Here are two things I liked about the movie that I copied from a totally different post I made because I'm lazy and I don't feel like writing about it anymore. + Atmosphere. This movie, in terms of composition, is unlike few others. As dumb as this will surely seem, it's like a silent movie with sound - the image is placed at the forefront and what the characters are saying is secondary. Some of the best scenes of the movie come when Murnau is filming his movie and what we are seeing is shown in grainy black-and-white film, interwoven with the "real" scenes in color. I think it's a reminder of some of the things that we take for granted about black and white film...The stimuli are different, sure, but the starkness of the image can make what you're seeing all the more visceral. The first time this technique is used, Murnau is filming the vampire's first appearance, and it is downright chilling to watch him emerge from the shadows. The movie is very Gothic, not in the meaning of the term that most of us know, but in that it's evocative of crumbling European castles and creatures lurking in the shadows. It successfully captures two tones: that of the original Nosferatu, and something completely new, bleak and haunted and totally beautiful. It seems shallow to praise a movie so heavily for its aesthetic, but Shadow of the Vampire is truly remarkable work. + Willem Dafoe. This is the role that really brought Dafoe to the forefront for me. To be honest, I never paid any attention to him in anything else he's been in, even though people claim he's a real acting chameleon and stuff like that. His work in Shadow of the Vampire as Max Schreck, however, is too good to be ignored. It is a truly incredible immersion of an actor into his role, standing well among the work of DDL's much loved Daniel Plainview or any other transformative performance in recent years. Frankly, for him to have lost the Supporting Actor Oscar to Benicio Del Toro's work in Traffic is a travesty; Benny is good, but it was a boring role and he's done far better work in a lot of other movies. Dafoe is unforgettable. He is the only actor to have nailed his accent, for one. Regrettably, a lot of the other accents are God-awful; between this and Mary Reilly, John Malkovich seems unable to do much with his voice. Dafoe must have watched Nosferatu a hundred times to prepare for this role. He moves like a vampire, looks like a vampire (thanks in part to the awesome makeup), talks like a vampire (a great feat considering Nosferatu didn't have any sound) and acts like a vampire, in more meanings of the term than one. There are so many dimensions to this role: black humor, longing, primal fear, vengeance, theatrics... the character is compelling enough as it is, and Dafoe nails every single one of these aspects effortlessly. You simply forget that it is a person playing this creature. I think this movie is an acquired taste, and no matter how much I praise it, there are going to be people who it doesn't quite gel with. I don't really have a problem with that; it just depends on what you're watching a movie to see. But if you're looking for something of dark, fundamental beauty, Shadow of the Vampire is tough to beat. And for those concerned, it is only 86 minutes long, so you really don't have much to lose.

• Emily A

  
  I love revisionist horror movies and this is a really noteworthy entry. I love how Murnau is portrayed as so completely dedicated to his movie that he's willing to feed this actress to an actual vampire for the sake of realism. This movie is almost like an inside joke for old… More
  I love revisionist horror movies and this is a really noteworthy entry. I love how Murnau is portrayed as so completely dedicated to his movie that he's willing to feed this actress to an actual vampire for the sake of realism. This movie is almost like an inside joke for old horror nerds as much as it is a love letter to the source material. This is so great.

• Cindy I

  
  Another disappointment. Not that the film was bad. It was actually OK, although nothing spectacular. And I enjoyed the reworking of Nosferatu. But this film is WAY too short. The beginning credits seem to go on forever, which makes it seem even shorter. And near the end, just when it… More
  Another disappointment. Not that the film was bad. It was actually OK, although nothing spectacular. And I enjoyed the reworking of Nosferatu. But this film is WAY too short. The beginning credits seem to go on forever, which makes it seem even shorter. And near the end, just when it started to pull together, it just ends. Maybe there will be a director's cut that is better.

• moon r

  
  willen dafoe steals this one as max schreck...one sick piece of work and one of method acting's earliest adherents!

• Dean M

  
  Do you believe Max Schreck was a real vampire while shooting the 1922 silent German vampire classic <i>Nosferatu</i>? That is really mysterious true story to believe it or not.

• Antony S

  
  Something of a failed experiment, this film-within-a-film (normally a topic I like) concerns the production of vampire classic Nosferatu. With the difference that Shreck is in fact, a real vampire. Though the picture has some good visual style and Malkovich and Kier do adequate… More
  Something of a failed experiment, this film-within-a-film (normally a topic I like) concerns the production of vampire classic Nosferatu. With the difference that Shreck is in fact, a real vampire. Though the picture has some good visual style and Malkovich and Kier do adequate performances, the whole affair requires a big leap of faith to swallow. And moreover, to try and act like Count Orlok was in fact a genuine bloodsucker does come off as pretty insulting. Though Dafoe does play said character exactly as intended, the simple fact that silent acting does not combine well with modernistic acting makes his efforts unintenionally comical. This shows most clearly in the actress' realisation of this fact, and Dafoe's angular scurrying makes the scene ridiculous. Kudos must go to the research behind the project, because aside from the film's raison d'etre, it is historically accurate. A slightly daft companion piece to a cinematic milestone.

• Michael G

  
  Pretty dry and dull, but worth it for Dafoe's performance alone.

• Nate Z

  
  [font=Arial][color=darkred]Darkly comical with great stabs of satire at the film industry (bloodsuckers in the movies anyone? Hmmmmmm). Willem Dafoe retains his title as Creepiest Actor Alive and goes for broke with a tour de force performance that should have you checking under the… More
  [font=Arial][color=darkred]Darkly comical with great stabs of satire at the film industry (bloodsuckers in the movies anyone? Hmmmmmm). Willem Dafoe retains his title as Creepiest Actor Alive and goes for broke with a tour de force performance that should have you checking under the bed. 'Shadow of the Vampire' is alive, to use the term sparingly, with wit and a slow but maturely steadied pace. Dafoe deserves an Oscar and your fear.[/color][/font] [font=Arial][color=darkred]Nate's Grade: A[/color][/font]

• Duncan R

  
  A brilliant performance by John Malkovich and an even more brilliant performance by Willem Dafoe makes this chilling fictional horror film about the making of a real horror film a must-see.

• Bill C

  
  Merhige creates a modern masterwork and who better to star in it than Malkovich and DaFoe. In real life, people are not so easily split into good and bad character as in a normal movie particularly horror movies. All the characters are placed on a grey scale slippery slope of what… More
  Merhige creates a modern masterwork and who better to star in it than Malkovich and DaFoe. In real life, people are not so easily split into good and bad character as in a normal movie particularly horror movies. All the characters are placed on a grey scale slippery slope of what really defines evil. Malkovich is 1930?s director of what he wants to be the most authentic vampire movie ever. He drags his whole production crew to Eastern Europe for extra authenticity. He cast the unknown Count Orlof, Dafoe, as his vampire. He explains that Orlof is a brilliant undiscovered actor and his methods require him to stay character at all times. The film they are shooting is very similar Nosfurautu 1922 and excellent itself, but the real drama happens when the cameras stop rolling. Malkovich, the overbearing control freak director assumes he has control of the situation, but it becomes evident that Dafoe?s vampire is really in control. Malkovich is willing to risk or sacrifice anything to put the film in the can, Dafoe has a similar desire and one of them will give-up everything for there craft. This movie ranks as on of my favorites of all time. Highly recommended for multiple viewings.

• MJS M

  
  This is the film that famously looked at the making of the 1922 classic Nosferatu and posed the question: ?what if Max Schrek were actually a vampire.? Such a concept could easily lead to a one note novelty film, but the people behind it have actually delivered a pretty intelligent… More
  This is the film that famously looked at the making of the 1922 classic Nosferatu and posed the question: ?what if Max Schrek were actually a vampire.? Such a concept could easily lead to a one note novelty film, but the people behind it have actually delivered a pretty intelligent take on vampirism and filmmaking. Willem Dafoe received an Oscar nomination for his work in the film. Dafoe?s performance is indeed interesting, especially if you?re familiar with what Dafoe normally looks and sounds like, but I?m not sure I?d be as impressed otherwise. This is actually a pretty deliberately paced and quiet film, this gives the film a unique feel but it also kind of made the film a bit harder to get into. Perhaps I just wasn?t in the mood for this when I popped it in the DVD player, but I sort of respected this more than I liked it.

• Doctor S

  
  Finally, an original vampire movie! Ironically by tracing the vampire genre to its roots. Ominous yet funny. Willem Dafoe *is* Max Schrek!

• Marion R

  
  This was really cool and interesting film. Much more interesting and scary than the actual film Nosferatu

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