The 20 best vampire movies by decade

Having established himself as one of the most prominent voices in 21st-century African-American cinema, Ryan Coogler turned to horror with the 2025 film Sinners.  The film is a powerful and haunting piece of Southern Gothic horror cinema, featuring terrific performances from Michael B. Jordan (in a dual role), Hailee Steinfeld, and newcomer Miles Caton. In addition to directing, Coogler also wrote the screenplay, showing that he is truly a multi-talented filmmaker. The film is haunting, brutal, and beautiful. 

Robert Eggers has repeatedly shown a gift for crafting compelling, terrifying horror tales, and with Nosferatu, he turned his attention to one of the most terrifying cinematic vampires. Though it’s a remake of the famous Murnau film, it more than stands on its own, thanks in large part to a chilling performance from Bill Skarsgård as the titular vampire. It nicely straddles the line between the alluring and the viscerally disturbing, which is very much in keeping with the general history of vampiric media.

Though it’s been somewhat eclipsed by the TV show of the same name, the film version of What We Do in the Shadows  is still a delightfully comedic take on the figure of the vampire. It has all of the humor that one expects of a mockumentary from Taika Waititi, who co-wrote and co-directed it. It’s the perfect blend of silly and horror, keeping its two elements in a delicate balance and mocking the vampire craze that was everywhere in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Regardless of how one feels about the Twilight  franchise, there’s no question that it was a true cultural event in the 2000s and into the 2010s. Both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are perfectly cast as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, the latter of whom is a member of a vampire family. It takes the traditions of the vampire and breathes new life into them, and it’s impossible to deny that it has had a tremendous influence on how pop culture views and depicts vampires.

There is something uniquely disturbing about the idea of a vampire child, which is precisely what makes Let the Right One In such a terrifying film. It’s a film that plays with the conventions of the vampire and features a queer subtext, making it a particular favorite among LGBTQ+ fans. It’s the kind of vampire film that is remarkably grounded in a sense of chilly realism, and this is precisely what makes it so frightening and yet so powerfully compelling.

Shadow of the Vampire is one of those horror movies that combines the pleasures of the vampire with the self-reflexivity of a movie about movies. The film’s central conceit is intriguing, as it proposes that Max Schreck, who played Count Orlok in Nosferatu, was, in reality,  a true vampire. Particularly notable is Willem Dafoe’s performance as Schreck, and he manages to uncannily slide into the role of the vampire with ease, to such a degree that one can almost believe that they are watching real events rather than a fictional film.

Francis Ford Coppola breathed new life into the classic story of Dracula with Bram Stoker’s Dracula,  his gothic romantic take on the most famous vampire. Gary Oldman is nothing short of spectacular in the film, capturing the many different sides of Dracula’s personality as he journeys from Transylvania to England in pursuit of the woman he is convinced is his former love reincarnated. It’s the kind of film that asks the viewer to take Dracula seriously, and this is what gives it its remarkable power as a piece of vampire media.

Anne Rice turned her considerable talents to adapting her beloved novel, Interview with the Vampire, into a screenplay.  The big-screen adaptation of her book is a true embarrassment of riches, particularly its cast, which includes Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, and Antonio Banderas. It manages to capture both the queer sensibility of Rice’s novel as well as its gothic trappings, and it has to be said that Cruise and Pitt have remarkable chemistry. At the same time, Dunst demonstrated her tremendous acting talent at a very young age.

The lesbian subtext that so often haunts vampire movies abruptly became text in The Hunger, a 1983 vampire movie . Coldly sexual, it features a trio of terrific performances from Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, and David Bowie. It’s one of those movies that demonstrates the extent to which the 1980s were a decade more than a little obsessed with the idea that vampires could be sexy, dangerous, and alluring — a reputation they maintain to this day. 

Kathryn Bigelow is one of those directors who’s always had a keen understanding of masculinity, particularly in her films from the 1980s. In Near Dark, she delivers a film that straddles genres, seamlessly blending horror and the western into a macabre, at times tragic tale. It manages to be both funny and sad, and though it wasn’t successful upon its original release, it has subsequently come to be regarded as both a cult classic and a canonical vampire film in its own right.

Directed by Joel Schumacher, with his usual flair, The Lost Boys  is both peak 1980s cinema and a thrilling vampire flick in its own right. It certainly helps that it stars some of the biggest names of that particular decade, including Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Haim, and Corey Feldman, but it’s genuinely terrifying in places. Though it was somewhat divisive among critics of the time, it has gone on to enjoy a robust afterlife, and it’s one of those films that showed the extent to which vampires could be sexy as well as frightening.  

The figure of Nosferatu has emerged several times on the big screen, including in 1979, when Werner Herzog directed his take on the figure. It definitely doesn’t shy away from the horror, and — unsurprisingly, this is Herzog, after all — it tends to focus on the grim and lonely existence of its title character. Moreover, as critics such as Roger Ebert noted at the time, it’s also a starkly beautiful film, a fact that is very much in keeping with the director’s approach to filmmaking.

Blacula was met with somewhat mixed reviews upon its initial release. While some remain lukewarm about it, there’s no doubt that it offered a unique take on the classic vampire story. In fact, it would help generate an entire cycle of blaxploitation horror films, though few of them were quite as successful. Though it can be a bit silly at times, and while there are quite a few plot holes that it can’t quite paper over, William Marshall gives a truly terrific performance in the title role. 

The novel I Am Legend has been adapted many times for the big screen, including in 1964, when it was retitled The Last Man on Earth. This version leans into the vampiric nature of the story, set in a post-apocalyptic landscape where most of humanity is now vampire, exhibiting the telltale signs of vampirism, including an allergy to garlic. It might not be as highly regarded as some of the other adaptations, but it does have its unique pleasures, including one of Vincent Price’s best performances.

Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Hammer Studios excelled at pumping out a truly remarkable number of vampire films. One of the most notable of these is Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which once again stars Christopher Lee as the title character. It might not rewrite the rules of the Hammer Dracula movie, but that’s precisely what makes it so much fun. When it comes down to it, there’s simply nothing quite like this studio’s output when it comes to crafting lurid vampire horror.

Starting in the 1950s, Hammer Studios became one of the major purveyors of vampire movies. The very first of these was released in 1958 and instantly became part of the Dracula canon. In large part, this is because Christopher Lee is absolutely captivating as the vampire, endowing him with a remarkable amount of sex appeal. It’s pure gothic melodrama, with heightened emotions and a saturated color palette that helped to update Dracula for a new age of filmmaking. 

The 1940s were a bit of a dry period for vampire movies, but a few were released during the decade. One of the most notable of these was House of Dracula, which, though it is quite silly in terms of its plot, is nevertheless worth a watch for its extraordinarily stacked cast. In addition to Lon Chaney Jr., who appears as the Wolf Man, it also starred John Carradine as Dracula. Throughout his career in Hollywood, one could always count on Carradine to convincingly and compellingly portray a villain, and this film is no exception. 

Released in 1936, Dracula’s Daughter is framed as a sequel to the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi. Gloria Holden gives a chilling performance as Countess Marya Zaleska, the title character and Dracula’s daughter. The film reads as a bit melodramatic from the present, but it still has more than its fair share of camp pleasures. In addition, it has also accrued quite a following in the LGBTQ+ community, thanks to the lesbian overtones that always hover just barely under the surface. 

If there’s one actor who is most firmly associated with Dracula, it would have to be Bela Lugosi. His suave turn as Count Dracula would go on to exert a truly tremendous influence over subsequent depictions, and it’s easy to see why. He manages to be both charismatic and terrifying at the same time, just as he is in Bram Stoker’s original novel. The film is widely and rightly regarded as a true classic of the genre, and it was even selected for preservation in the Library of Congress. 

Directed by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu is an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There’s no question that the film is a true horror masterpiece, thanks to both Murnau’s German Expressionist aesthetic and also the lead performance from Max Schreck as Count Orlok, the film’s equivalent of Dracula. Even now, after over a century, Nosferatu has the power to chill and to terrify. It’s easy to see why it would continue to be such a powerful influence over the cinematic depiction of the vampire.