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84
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83
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81
Juno
81
Bamako
78
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77
Nanking
74
Orphanage, The
71
Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, The
71
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
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Lars and the Real Girl
69
Charlie Wilson's War
68
Business of Being Born, The
68
Delirious
68
War Dance
65
Great Debaters, The
64
Cloverfield
63
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
63
11th Hour, The
63
Hannah Takes the Stairs
60
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
57
Romulus, My Father
57
Teeth
55
Resurrecting the Champ
53
Music Within
52
Hollywood Dreams
51
Golden Compass, The
49
Good Night, The
47
Bella
47
Lions for Lambs
47
27 Dresses
46
Reservation Road
44
Nina's Heavenly Delights
43
Youth Without Youth
43
Final Season, The
41
Mad Money
41
First Sunday
39
Alvin and the Chipmunks
39
P.S. I Love You
38
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
37
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32
Untraceable
30
Over Her Dead Body
30
Cover
29
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24
One Missed Call
15
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7
Hottie and the Nottie, The
xx
Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Shadow of the Vampire
Lions Gate Films
MPAA RATING: R for some sexuality, drug content, violence and langauge
Starring
John Malkovich,
Willem Dafoe,
Cary Elwes,
Eddie Izzard,
Catherine McCormack,
and
Udo Kier
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)
| GENRE(S): |
Horror
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Steven Katz
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
E. Elias Merhige
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: May 29, 2001
Video: May 29, 2001
Theatrical: December 29, 2000
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
93 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK / USA / Luxembourg |
Received two 2001 Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actor (Dafoe).

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Manages to turn a highly dubious concept into a subtle and deliciously mordant comedy.

88
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
Paints a vivid and darkly humorous picture of a world where directors are all-powerful and vampires are real; whether you want to buy into either fantasy is up to you. I did, and had a grand old time.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
"Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck." I put quotes around that because it's not just a line for a movie ad but the truth: He embodies the Schreck of "Nosferatu" so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference.

88
Boston Globe
Jay Carr
He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.

84
Mr. Showbiz
Michael Atkinson
Might be the most original film of the year.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Kicky, elaborately constructed fantasy.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Diabolically amusing without plunging into the Mel Brooks zone, and it's smart without being pedantic. And it's genuinely scary at times.

80
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
Without question, Shadow of the Vampire is a stately and elegant horror film, interwoven with delicious strands of black comedy.

80
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
At once wildly metaphorical and distressingly literal-minded, Shadow of the Vampire tries, with mixed success, to be scary, funny and profound all at once.

75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Hypnotic and fun.

75
USA Today
Susan Wloszczyna
Feast upon a career-peak Willem Dafoe performance as a bat-eared fiend who is foul, funny, ferocious, forlorn and unforgettable.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
His (Dafoe's) re-creation of Schreck is an Oscar-level performance, but more than that, it's an unforgettable one: great, scary, horrifically funny.

75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Malkovich is wryly amusing as German director F.W. Murnau, and Dafoe steals the show as a vampire playing an actor playing a vampire.

75
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Works on several playful levels. Most obviously, it is a horror movie in which life imitates art on a movie set.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann
Dafoe never reverts to campy, movie-monster gestures but seems liberated, consumed by his character, inspired to give a performance that's intuitive and otherworldly.

75
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
A clever, funny, extended joke about ruthless directors, method actors and the power of the cinema.

70
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
Willem Dafoe's performance in Shadow of the Vampire is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

70
Film.com
Peter Brunette
It's a great ride, gorgeous, silly and deeply intellectual by turns, but, for all its inventive fireworks, sad to say, it finally doesn't quite work.

70
LA Weekly
Paul Malcolm
Malkovich and Dafoe play off each other with a devilish hamminess.

67
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Built on an absolutely marvelous idea but manages to make only about two-thirds of a good movie of it.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A bit of a one-joke wonder.

63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Worth seeing for Dafoe's performance alone, a singular mixture of camp and pathos that echoes the tragic, romantic allure of vampires in literature and film.

60
Film.com
Ernest Hardy
If only this movie were rich enough, strong enough to be worthy of this (Dafoe's) performance.

60
TNT RoughCut
Andy Klein
In the end, the performances and the basic strength of the premise make Shadow of the Vampire a relatively diverting ninety minutes. But there is the inescapable feeling that it is a shadow of the great film it might have been.

60
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
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.

50
Slate
David Edelstein
There are times when Dafoe's accent strays into Billy Crystal Yiddish, but the notion of Vlad the Impaler aging into a finicky old Jew has its own kind of piquancy.

50
Chicago Reader
Mark Peranson
It's odd that a movie featuring a great classical director is notable for some extremely contemporary acting.

30
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
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.


The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
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