They Don’t Make Vampires Like They Used To

At the Catholic literary journal Dappled Things, Eleanor Bourg Donlon wonders why they don’t make vampires like they used to :

The real problem with so many of these [new vampyre] films is actually they are both too serious and yet not serious enough. In the midst of taking themselves so damned seriously (the profanity is apt when speaking of the nosferatu), they become seriously unrealistic. (Says Abbot: “I know there’s no such person as Dracula. You know there’s no such person as Dracula.” “But,” quips Costello in response: “does Dracula know it?”) They are so desperate to invest the metaphysically denuded world with some sort of meaning that they end up dressing in modified Lugosi garb and speaking in husky, tremulous tones. This is symptomatic of a pervasive problem: as we have completely lost the sense of the sacramental nature of reality, we attempt to convey the preternatural through fantasy and costume. The more conspicuous the spectacle and more gaudy the display, the clearer it is that we are dull to its true presence. On the one hand we superficially embrace the supernatural under the guise of the fantastical; on the other, we completely reject the metaphysical backdrop proper to any such foray into vampyrism. And— pace drooling Edward Cullen fans—it is the latter which truly makes such nonsensical nightmares resonate with viewers.

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