As you know, no one makes horror movies anymore. What used to be horror movies have split into the genres of farce-of-a-horror-movie, farce-of-a-farce-of-a-horror-movie, and softcore-porn-thinly-disguised-as-a-horror-movie, all of which tend to be insulting if watchable at all. So you can understand that after being told that it was "sort of a horror movie, but more of a comedy," I approached Shadow of the Vampire with more than a little trepidation. I could hardly have been more pleasantly surprised.
Shadow of the Vampire is a fanciful tale about the making of Nosferatu—Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu—Symphony of Horrors), a little-known (at least to an ignoramus like myself, and probably most of you) film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Nosferatu was produced illegally (most copies were eventually destroyed for copyright infringement), and supposedly the production was plagued by strange events, such as the disappearance of a few crew members. Shadow traces the production of Nosferatu from the beginning, following the Prana company from Germany to their filming locations in Romania. The director, F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) has hired Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), a local actor of "unusual methods," to play the vampire Count Orlok. Unlike the real Max Schreck (who was apparently a respected actor and made many films after Nosferatu), our Schreck really is a vampire. And as he becomes more difficult to control and crew members start disappearing, Murnau and the remainder of his company scheme to get out of the situation alive.
Don’t worry, I didn’t give away any plot twists. Shadow, written by Steven Katz and directed by E. Elias Merhige, embraces the horror convention that everything must be glaringly obvious to the audience, while passing the notice of even the most observant character. That Max is a vampire is obvious: He lives in an unfurnished, rotting castle and repeatedly attacks the cameraman. The crew members blithely fall into his traps and ignore any sign that he is anything more than that eccentric method actor who won’t play nice and get drunk with the rest of the cast. (Watching Schreck gruesomely devour a bat over a bottle of schnapps, an awed Henrik Galeen (Aden Gillett) exclaims "Max, the German theatre needs you!") However, the signs of impending doom are cute enough (the company rides to Romania on a train named "Charon"), and Max’s hammy moments of humanism are subtle enough to avoid being annoying.
The substance of the movie lies in Murnau’s obsession with screen immortality, confronted with a being to whom immortality has become a curse and yet an unattainable goal. While his body survives, becoming increasing emaciated and decrepit, Schreck can no longer remember how he became a vampire, how to cook, or the face of the woman he used to love. His slavish captivation with the film image is a pathetic foil to Murnau and is the living, breathing embodiment of Murnau’s destructive obsessions.
Katz deftly mocks the sexual excess of recent Dracula adaptations. He also takes shots at the entire process of filmmaking, with mixed success. The lead actress, Greta Schroder (Catherine McCormack), is a slutty, pampered primadonna. In one scene we hear her screams from the hallway of a hotel; production members rush to force open the door, only to find Schroder writhing half-naked on her bed. She has been seduced not by the vampire’s influence but by the new cameraman’s morphine. This, in my opinion, is one of the finer moments in the film.
All of the actors are bitchy and smoke a lot, while the producer studiously exerts his illusory authority. These stereotypes could become tiresome, but the dialogue is sufficiently quick and the actors sufficiently skilled that they meld into a hugely enjoyable ensemble. Unfortunately, the pacing of the movie is often off-kilter—like a heart palpitation, for lack of a better comparison. I often felt disoriented, without quite being able to tell what was wrong.
But Shadow is not mocking the horror movie genre. On the contrary, Katz and Merhige have the utmost respect for the horror genre. Colored production scenes seamlessly merge with black-and-white frames mimicking scenes from Nosferatu, and the shots in Schreck’s castle capture the chthonic starkness of the original. The film concludes with a scene containing such genuine moments of horror that it puts all the Jennifer-Love-Hewitt’s-breasts-disguised-as-horror-movies and faux-docudrama-horror-movies to shame. Despite modest faults in plot and pacing, this is well worth seeing.
