Top 5 Essential Vampire Movies

Upon first glance, you might think that listing out the top five vampire movies would be easy. You’ve got your all-time critically acclaimed fan favorites like Bram Stocker’s Dracula and Interview With The Vampire. Then appease your inner teen with the coming-of-age vamp tale that defined a generation in The Lost Boys. Cap it off with an action phenom like Blade and maybe a modern insta-classic like Let The Right One In. Toss in an honorable mention or two, say Fright Night and Near Dark, and you’re done, right?

But if you want to dig deeper, and really get to the heart of what it means to be essential, then stick through the list that follows. There can be little doubt that we’re experiencing something of a renaissance in vampire cinema. Whether it’s the quiet-as-snow subtlety of Let The Right One In, the hardcore action and drama of the Stakeland franchise, or even the deadpan comedy of He Never Died, modern indie vampire films take their subject seriously. Even the massive success of the twinkly-vampire/were-Pattinson franchise shows that Hollywood still invests in the genre. But we didn’t get here overnight.

So stick around for a journey throughout classic and contemporary films, as I attempt to derive the definitive list of the five most influential and essential vampire films of all time. These are not necessarily the five best films. They’re not even necessarily my personal favorites. Instead, this list was constructed for the singular purpose of highlighting those five films that have most contributed to vampire pop culture. Throughout the process, I uncovered five essential categories of films: Dracula adaptations, infection-theory, the coming-of-age allegory, the culture clash, and the ethical allegory. Each of these categories includes multiple entries worthy of consideration as all-time classics in their own right. But in the end, there can be only one, so here goes nothing …