Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 31 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 19 Ratings

  • Starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe
  • Summary: A witty, atmospheric, and deliciously feverish tale inspired by the great German film director F. W. Murnau and the making of his unforgettable "Nosferatu." (Lions Gate Films)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 31
  2. Negative: 1 out of 31
  1. 100
    It's a mesmerizing spectacle.
  2. Without question, Shadow of the Vampire is a stately and elegant horror film, interwoven with delicious strands of black comedy.
  3. It's a marvelous, resonant joke that never quite succeeds: Stretches of the film resemble a Dario Argento horrorfest crossed with a Mel Brooks spoof. But the director, E. Elias Merhige, and his screenwriter, Steven Katz, occasionally bring some rapture to the creepiness, and Dafoe's vampire, with his graceful, ritualistic death lunges, is a sinewy, skull-and-crossbones horror who seems to come less out of the German Expressionist tradition than from Kabuki.
  4. 30
    An academic exercise driven by adolescent ideas that never shape themselves into a narrative: in short, a movie that can never dislodge the art fatally wedged up its butt.

See all 31 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 10
  2. Negative: 2 out of 10
  1. While Dafoe and Malkovich deliver on all fronts, the acting by a good majority of the cast is mediocre-to-bad at times. The story is very slow, boring at times. Before I forget, it's not scary either. Nothing to fear children. Expand
  2. Man tries to make Dracula film without Bram Stoker's consent, goes to eerie locations, gets oddball to play the vampire, things go wrong.
    With
    a cast as decent as this & the story based on such a classic film, it's a shame this was nowhere near as good as it could have been.
    It begins very well but quickly starts to jump about & become disjointed & does seemed very rushed by the end.
    Willem Dafoe is amazing as Max Schrek but they should have used him more sparingly & made him even more mysterious.
    Expand

See all 10 User Reviews

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