Vampires have gone a long way in the history of horror movies, with plenty of horrifying depictions keeping them fresh with each new depiction of characters like Dracula and Nosferatu. Having been around for so long, ever since the original Dracula was released in 1897, vampires have gone through the ringer in pop culture, from the pretty teen angst of the Twilight series to the leather-clad action heroes of Blade. But the horror genre has always found new inventive ways to keep the blood-suckers terrifying despite audience’s familiarity with them.

There are several ways to go about making vampires scary. One route is to focus on the human element of the creatures, which often represent real-world abuse and violence, making them a true to life and emotional representation of such themes. However, the more visually-appealing way to keep vampires terrifying, as will be employed by the upcoming Nosferatu remake, is to focus on the monstrous, alien, and demonic. From Count Dracula to Count Orlok, there are still plenty of threatening horror vampires.

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Abigail

2024

The intricacies and numerous rules revolving around vampire-hood often make the creatures of the night great subjects for horror-comedies. Shows like What We Do in the Shadows and movies like Renfield have demonstrated how humorous vampirism can truly be, if in a macabre way. That’s not to say that genuine horror and jokes can’t coexist, as proven by films like 2024’s Abigail.

From the minds behind Scream 6, Abigail tells the story of a tween vampire who is kidnapped by unsuspecting criminals hoping to collect a ransom for her, only to find themselves neck deep in blood. The titular vampire orchestrates an almost operatic ballet of visceral gore, with actress Alisha Weir selling the insanity of a centuries-old being trapped in the body of a 12-year-old girl. Her dead-eyed stare and row of piranha-like teeth make for an unnerving image. That being said, the film’s comedy stylings make Abigail not quite as frightening as she could be.

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Let The Right One In

2008

Despite the ubiquity of Hollywood within the entertainment industry, the United States by no means has a monopoly on vampire stories, especially considering the classic vampires as audiences know them were first conceived in European folklore. One great example of a foreign vampire flick is the Swedish-made romantic horror film Let The Right One In. Like Abigail, this film uses a pint-sized version of Dracula, following the story of a young boy, Oskar, who makes friends with a girl, named Eli, not realizing that she’s actually an ancient immortal vampire.

Let The Right One In leans on its human elements to stir up a deeply uneasy sense of dread, as Oskar’s blossoming young romance with the blood-sucker allows him to rationalize horrific acts of violence. The film’s animalistic depictions of vampire attacks give the uneasy feeling of what might be the most “realistic” version of what a feeding vampire would actually look like, injecting the unassuming Eli with a jarring amount of feral rage. Still, at the end of the day, Eli is just a little kid, limiting the sense of threat she can exude.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula

1992

One of the all-time greatest performances by Gary Oldman, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an enduring classic take on the original vampire story. A mostly straightforward adaptation of the original novel, plus a few embellishments, Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the iconic tale is dripping with Gothic atmosphere and blood-curdling style. It all comes down to Gary Oldman’s Dracula, who he portrays at different points of his profane immortal life.

Oldman is sinister enough as the vengeful Vlad the Impaler, but its only as a fully realized vampire that the performance taps in to the true fear vampirism can inspire. The unbelievable makeup and special effects create a fascinating contrast to Dracula’s strangely effective powers of seduction, intertwining terror and arousal into an alarming concoction. Bram Stoker’s Dracula might be one of the most spine-chilling interpretations of the original text, but is ultimately too classic and recognizable to be the scariest live-action vampire.

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Fright Night

1985

Vampires and teenagers seem to be a winning combination, from Twilight to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That being said, it’s rare for such entries in the vampire subgenre of horror to actually manage some genuine scares, with 1985’s Fright Night being an alarming exception. The film follows a teen boy who discovers his neighbor is actually and undead creature of the night, recruiting a TV vampire hunter to help him stop her killing spree.

The vampires of Fright Night are a true visual spectacle. Having all the powers, strengths, and weaknesses of the vampires of classic antiquity, their hideous transformations into ferocious beasts and unnervingly huge mouths of razor-sharp teeth conjure a fearsome mental image, as they howl with delight at their kills. Still, these beasts are ultimately overcome by their many weaknesses, which makes them scary, if not as threatening as other vampire depictions.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter

2023

While vampires are often human-passing in appearance, some of their most frightening on-screen appearances have morphed them into something more bestial. Such is the case for 2023’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which features Dracula himself at his most feral and frenzied. The film is set within the timeline of the original Dracula novel, explaining how the crew of the Demeter fared in their encounter with the most famous vampire of them all.

This iteration of Dracula depicts a monster that is efficient in its methods, but also takes great joy in its evil acts. Going from slick Transylvanian noble to a horrific creature of the night more akin to a gargoyle than anything else, watching the pinpoint reflection of light in the darkness of Dracula’s eyes as he picks off his victims aboard the claustrophobic ship one-by-one makes for a breathtaking experience. That being said, The Last Voyage of the Demeter isn’t the most engaging film outside of its Dracula, which holds back this particular version from being scarier.

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Midnight Mass

2021

From the mind of horror visionary Mike Flanagan, it’s actually a TV miniseries that winds up having one of the most terrifying incarnations of a more creature-like vampire in all live-action media. Most of Midnight Mass is a slow burn mystery-thriller centered around an impoverished island community, whose zealous townsfolk and church are hiding a sinister secret. It’s only when enough of this secret is revealed that the series surprises its viewers with a sharp turn into vampire storytelling.

The creature known only as The Angel is an ancient vampire and one of Flanagan’s most horrifying horror villains. Exhibiting an almost graceful presence despite its hideous appearance and numerous jumpscares, The Angel truly feels like a centuries-old evil that doesn’t belong in the mortal world. If it had more screentime and focus, the being could easily rank among the very most terrifying vampires ever put to screen.

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Salem’s Lot

1979

While a remake of the Stephen King adaptation Salem’s Lot currently awaits release at the time of writing, the original two-part miniseries manages to present a terrifying vampire to contend with the best modern interpretations of the beasts. After a writer returns to his small Maine hometown, Salem’s Lot, to write his next horror novel, the arrival of a mysterious new stranger heralds a string of disappearances which turn out to be the result of vampire activity.

Salem’s Lot has a two-pronged approach to making its vampires scary. Foremost, the film’s primary ancient vampire antagonist, Kurt Barlow, is shockingly scary for the miniseries’ low budget, being the only on-screen vampire to-date with the feat of literally scaring a victim to death with his appearance alone. However, the true genius of Salem’s Lot is how it makes the spread of vampirism itself a threat, seeding resentment and paranoia among the small town as they struggle to determine who to trust.

2

30 Days Of Night

2007

The one thing most vampires have in common, no matter the media, is an aversion to sunlight. 30 Days of Night finds a clever workaround to this weakness, taking place in an Alaskan town in the arctic circle in which the sun doesn’t rise for an entire month at a time, leading to a roving gang of vampires laying siege to the town. The vampires on display in this brutally bleak horror film are among the most terrifying ever concieved.

From their shark-like teeth to their inky black eyes, the 30 Days of Night vampires are at once human and inhuman, living in the uncanny valley where the two meet. Unspeakably violent but wickedly intelligent, these vampires are capable of setting traps, using ambush tactics, and starving out their prey, using the desolate landscape to their advantage. The moment one of them pauses speaking in their alien language to simply state “No God” to a human character begging for mercy, these vampires made a name for themselves as some of the scariest in cinema.

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Nosferatu

1922

One of the great masterpieces of the silent film era, the original vampire movie sensation still holds up as one of the most chilling visual depictions of an undead beast of the night ever. A strange re-telling of Dracula with some changed character names that is at once faithful to the book and entirely original, the German expressionist masterpiece is unsettling to watch even by modern standards. While the atmosphere, eerie set design, and suspense do much of the heavy lifting, Max Schreck’s Count Orlok is the true star of the show.

WIth his gaunt, hunched appearance, rodent-like fangs, and long fingernails, Orlok is the stuff of nightmares, the film’s limited special effects somehow combining with the grainy black-and-white footage to become scarier than a modern blockbuster with millions of dollars of CGI at its disposal could ever hope to replicate. Nosferatu certainly knows how to use its horrific protagonist as well, having him linger in doorways and slowly creep into vision to build a mounting sense of dread that can’t be looked away from. It’s no wonder Robert Eggers seeks to remake this horror classic.