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A contract between Orlok and Knock

Murnau and Grau gave Orlok in the film a demonic lineage and an occult origin: Orlok is the creation of Belial, one of the Satanic archdemons. Belial in Psalm 41:8–10 is also associated with pestilence, with Orlok in film being a manifestation of contagion, rats pouring out of his coffins onto the streets of Wisborg, spreading Black Death. Orlok's link to Belial is also significant because Belial is "one of the demons traditionally summoned by Goetic magicians" – making Orlok someone who practiced dark sorcery before becoming a vampire.

Orlok and his servant Knock are communicating in occult language – the documents between Orlok and Knock are written in Enochian, a constructed language said to be that of the angels, which was recorded in the private journals of English occultist John Dee and his colleague English alchemist Edward Kelley in late 16th-century Elizabethan England.

The character of Professor Bulwer in the film is named in reference to English occult novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton.The idea of astral entities, arising from the dark thoughts of human beings, responsible for epidemics that call for blood sacrifices in order to prevent them, is also closely linked to that of the alchemist Paracelsus, whose figure is partly embodied in the film in the character of Professor Bulwer (who is mentioned in the film to be Paracelsian himself). This is made concrete in the film in the plague epidemic that spreads through the city of Wisborg, which cannot be remedied by scientific methods, but by the blood sacrifice of a woman, thus destroying forever the dark being responsible for this catastrophic situation. 

First look at ‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’
Releasing this Summer on Netflix. 

She’s Back - M3GAN 2.0 

The Vampiric Vanity Project That Accidentally Became a Watershed Moment in Horror

The name Carl Theodor Dreyer is probably not familiar to the average moviegoer. A Danish auteur whose almost 50-year career produced only a dozen movies, he was an ambitious pioneer of early cinema who always wanted to push the limit. In a letter he wrote to prospective backers in his early career, he said, “I will make it my goal to produce a work of art which will set a standard for future films,” and in his own unique way, he achieved this. As film historian Casper Tybjerg has lengthily chronicled, Dreyer was a determined artist who would do whatever it took to bring his ideas to life. Following his now-classic but contemporaneously disappointing run with The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer wanted to do something different, and through a number of interesting twists, ended up delving into the horror genre with his silent masterpiece, 1932's Vampyr. What he didn't see coming was how the involvement of a wealthy baron named Nicolas de Gunzburg would take his latest project from idea to finished product.

Vampyr is the brief, simple story of a young man named Allan Grey, who is something of a spiritualist and prone to strange energies. When he lodges at a riverside pub in the French countryside, he is overwhelmed by some mysterious presence that troubles his days and disturbs his nights. A strange old man wanders into his room one night and places a parcel on his desk labeled "to be opened upon my death." When ghostly shadows lure Allan to a country manor, he witnesses the murder of its occupant — and it is none other than the strange old man from the inn. The rest of the family invites Allan to stay with them, and he unwraps the mysterious parcel left for him to find a book on vampires, leading him to realize there is something supernatural at play that he must bring to an end.

It is a remarkably adventurous piece of cinema far more in keeping with the emerging surrealist art film movement of its time; Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí teamed up for two iconic surrealist pictures, Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or, while Jean Cocteau was exploring the avant-garde with The Blood of a Poet. Such artists were breaking out and shaking off the constraints of the studio system that had, up to this point, largely governed feature film. As with any good indie production, this forced filmmakers to get creative, and arguably, try a lot harder than they would otherwise have to. Money was tight, so shoots were cheap, on-location affairs with minimal equipment and often unknown actors. Their interest was not really in making money — although that couldn’t hurt — but in creating something truly unique, in expanding their own artistic minds and exploring ideas in ways that audiences hadn’t seen before.

It was within this environment that Vampyr was born. Tybjerg’s highly informative article Waking Life details the background and production of the movie, and exactly how and why it became what it was. It explains that after the financial failure of Joan of Arc, the studio bigwigs Dreyer had worked with got cold feet about his bankability as a director, and pulled the plug on his next project. Far from deterred by this move, Dreyer took it as an opportunity to rethink his next step and having been increasingly inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu’s seminal gothic horror novel Carmilla, he set his sights on bringing some sophistication to the then-fledgling horror genre, and the timing was perfect.

The early 20th century was marked by a boom in spiritualism and curiosity in the supernatural. Séances and stage magic were becoming popular, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — a man of science and logic — spent his life chasing the possibility of the supernatural, and was even fooled into believing that two little girls in Northern England had captured photographic evidence of fairies. The occult and otherworldly matters were at the forefront of public consciousness, and evidently, this fed into the stories explored in the early years of cinema.

So Dreyer had his idea, but what he needed now was money. Luckily for him, he happened to meet a flamboyant and very wealthy young socialite named Nicolas de Gunzburg. Up until this point, Gunzburg had lived a life of extravagance and leisure, attending and hosting lavish parties, enchanting guests with his skills as a dancer and raconteur, and rubbing shoulders with all the right people. According to a Vanity Fair profile of Gunzburg, his later life would see him discover such talents as Lauren Bacall and Calvin Klein and act as editor for a number of influential magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. But the arguable stepping stone into these later vocations was his meeting with Dreyer, who said he had a movie in the works if only he could find the money. And as it happened, Gunzburg had always fancied trying his hand at the old acting thing.

As many sources from Professor Tybjerg to Vanity Fair regale, an agreement was reached between the two men: Gunzburg would fund a movie if he could act in it. This worked for Dreyer, and they set about making Vampyr. It’s one of those entertainment origin stories that has become a legend in its own right, an alignment of stars that went on to create something truly memorable. Although it would be Gunzburg’s one and only acting credit, his work on Vampyr, both as an actor and producer, is one very eye-catching square on the astounding patchwork that was his life, and there’s no doubt that he put a lot of heart into what he was doing. Between Gunzburg and Dreyer, this movie was the product of mad artists doing things their way, and the pairing turned out a classic piece of cinema that is far more sophisticated and artistically fine-tuned than one might expect from a picture of its time and place.

Although you could never accuse Vampyr of being scary by modern standards, there is an uncanny otherworldliness about it that is unsettling, and it is always going for a subtle and stylish approach that defies the conventions of horror as it is known today. It is all about drawing on the deepest human fears and conveying them in creative ways that draw a visceral reaction from the audience. A particularly brilliant sequence — one that leans fully into the Buñuel style of dreaminess — shows Allan having an out-of-body experience, and seeing his own death and burial. This is filmed from the perspective of his lifeless body, as he is carried out of the manor, looking straight up at the looming building and murky sky above, to the fields where he is buried. The scene demonstrates his deepest fears stirred by the undoubtedly supernatural goings-on, showing a glimpse of what being undead for eternity may look like and why it is so important that he bring the nightmare to an end. It is the perfect blend of relatable human fear and fairytale menace.

The heavy stylism with which Vampyr is made is quite remarkable: in an era without the luxury of easily portable cameras, or much sense of physical freedom on set, the movie goes to considerable lengths to do something a bit different. There is much handheld camerawork from a perspective that refuses to sit still, and an eerily voyeuristic feeling is achieved. The camera follows characters as they walk, run, and leave rooms; it lurks behind furniture and objects as if spying on them. A surprising effort is given to shot composition and choreography, with many long-running shots that pan and swivel to follow the action. A particularly inspired sequence uses double exposure to give Allan a translucent ghostlike appearance as he investigates the wrongdoings of the crazy village doctor, someone he suspects may be playing a part in the mayhem. This cannot have been an easy thing to pull off so neatly, but the experienced director clearly had much heart and thought to put into this work, even if he didn’t have studio money. Despite the odd impressive set piece, there is a subtlety to Vampyr that really gives it its bite: it is always looking to throw the audience off by the tiniest margin, so that everything feels a little queasy, but not enough to attract any suspicion, like an old house built ever so slightly askew.

It is arguable that the film industry — even the wider art world in general — has reached several creative peaks since the start of the 20th century, and these have each been reactionary in nature. While the likes of Dreyer and Buñuel were relatively early figures in the history of cinema, in their time art was being turned on its head by countercultural movements, mostly in response to WWI. This was how Dadaism came about, in which any sense of logic and order was rebelled against in favor of radical expression by any means. It was essentially a giant middle finger to cultural norms, and this is often where the best kind of art emerges. It is all the more amusing that Vampyr was made possible by the fanciful ambitions of an aristocrat who just wanted to be an actor, only to end up being an immensely impactful piece of cinema which now, in its hundredth year, is remembered as a classic that typified the best of its era and influenced the horror genre for decades to come. 

The Occult Connections Hiding Behind the Scenes of Film's First Great Vampire Movie

Back in 1922, German Expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau wanted to make his own horror picture based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Because Dracula was copywritten material, Murnau and company were forced to change the character's names, and so Count Dracula became Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Of course, that changed nothing, and, after a lawsuit by Stoker's heirs, Murnau's Nosferatu (sometimes titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) was ordered to be destroyed. Miraculously, the film managed to survive, and we've come to see it as the classic, quintessential vampire picture. But did you know that Nosferatu was influenced by the occult? Well, at least the film's producer, Albin Grau, was.

According to a 2007 documentary about Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau, titled Language of Shadows, Albin Grau's influence on the production was considerable. He was the one who storyboarded the picture and was directly responsible for the look of many of the sets, costumes, and even marketing materials. But Grau was more than just a filmmaker. In fact, he was a devout and committed occultist, one who even had ties to Aleister Crowley and the Fraternitas Saturnai (aka Brotherhood of Saturn). Grau was so infatuated with mystical and occult practices that he had these messages and symbols woven throughout the 1922 picture. It was his production company, Prana Films, that he hoped to use as a means to explore his occult fascinations on the screen (via Sight and Sound). Though Nosferatu was the only production the company ever made (due to the lawsuit by Bram Stoker's heirs), its influence on modern cinema is undeniable.

But as we watch Nosferatu, Grau's occultic obsession quickly becomes clear. This is not obvious in the clear Enochian symbols seen on Count Orlok's contract at the beginning of the film, as well as through the vampire's grotesque appearance. The picture itself even suggests that Count Orlok was likely turned into a vampire by demons in the first place, possibly on purpose after conjuring up Satan's chief lieutenant, Belial. Naturally, Grau would have known that Belial is a demon mentioned not just in the Bible but in the occult as well. The Lesser Key of Solomon, a grimoire of particular fascination for occultists (and one Crowley interpreted into English), mentions the demon by name. Anton Levay's The Satanic Bible (sometimes called The Book of Belial) also mentions this very demon, noting that his name means "without a master." Count Orlok is certainly a vampire without a master and aims to be the master of others as well.

Another change that reflects Grau's occultic beliefs would be how the Abraham Van Helsing character from Dracula was renamed Professor Bulwer (John Gottowt). While it's unclear if Grau himself named the character or just influenced his creation, there's still a connection to the producer's strange belief system. Though Anibal Molto Barranco of El Hype Magazine considers Bulwer a nod to the 16th-century alchemist Paracelsus (given the film's esoteric themes and all), others such as David Huckvale, in his book Movie Magick: The Occult in Film, make the case that he's named after novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who often wrote about the occult.

Though director F. W. Murnau himself had no direct connection to the occult (save for his partnership with Grau), it seems that Nosteratu's dark undertones may still be influencing the project today. Back in 2015, The Guardian reported that Murnau's grave was desecrated, and the filmmaker's skull was stolen right from its resting place. Authorities found strange wax residue left around the premises, which led many to believe that an occultic ritual may have taken place at the gravesite. To this day, Murnau's skull is still missing, a haunting thought indeed.

Despite the very religious elements of the Dracula source material, Nosferatu has a clear occult influence on it, which speaks directly to Albin Grau's powerful obsessions. This was a man who was deeply entrenched in the workings of the occult and allowed those beliefs to inform his artistic and creative endeavors. After all, his very next film, Warning Shadows, highlighted the use of sorcery and witchcraft for the use of divination. In the film, we see a bunch of men interested in romantically pursuing a local count's wife, but the witch character uses her abilities to show each of them what their respective futures may hold if they do. While Nosferatu is an exceptional piece of Gothic horror and German Expressionism, Grau's impact on the entire production laced it with more occult ideas that perhaps audiences were even aware of. 

This Gnarly Horror Movie on Netflix Has One of 2024's Wildest, Most Inventive Kills


When was the last time you couldn’t believe they just did that for an on-screen death in a horror movie or series? In the same year that had audiences gasping over that gnarly yoga kill from In a Violent Nature and moviegoers trying not to vomit in theaters while watching Terrifier 3, here’s a new one. Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar, who has made a name for himself in his home country and abroad with dark and shocking films, adds to 2024’s craziest deaths in horror with his most recent film, Grave Torture. The setup is simple in turning a washing machine into something to fear, and then the scene's execution (pun intended) goes in a direction that not even the most seasoned horror fan could expect.

After siblings, Sita (Widuri Puteri) and Adil (Muzakki Ramdhan), suffer a family tragedy, they are sent away to an Islamic boarding school in an isolated village where Sita becomes obsessed with “Siksa Kubur” or “grave torture,” an Islamic concept about the afterlife torment a deceased person suffers if their faith isn’t strong enough. Abuse from the school elders forces the siblings to flee, but as adults, they continue to struggle with trauma from their childhoods. Sita (Faradina Mufti) plans to finally disprove that the supernatural exists, and it involves working at a nursing home. Her search for answers will not only terrorize her but those around her when one of the residents at the nursing home suffers a gruesome death.

Grave Torture has the horror elements Anwar is a master at creating, namely the unsettling atmosphere that can be stifling as if an invisible fog is seeping off the screen. Something doesn’t feel right in the secluded family home in Satan’s Slaves (2017) or the apartment building that offers no safety in numbers in Satan’s Slaves: Communion (2022). In Grave Torture, Anwar hints at danger with ominous shots that linger a few seconds too long on a mundane object: the nursing home’s faulty washing machine that spins with the door open. After the one-hour mark, Sita’s quest to debunk “grave torture” has seemingly triggered an otherwordly presence to haunt the nursing home.

Two residents living in the nursing home are husband and wife Nani (Christine Hakim) and Pandi (Arswendy Bening Swara). Pandi never leaves his wife’s side, claiming she is clumsy when he isn’t around. One night, when Sita notices a dark spirit lingering around the place, Nani is left devastated by finding her husband cheating on her with one of the nurses and demands to be left alone. The emotional distress causes her to lose control of her body, peeing herself before getting sick. The discomfort from seeing how Pandi’s cheating has affected her brings sympathy from audiences, which makes what happens to Nani all the more horrifying.

In horror movies and shows, unlikeable characters often have viewers root for the monster to attack, but it can increase the shock value when violence is put upon someone innocent, such as Nani. The older woman tries to clean her soiled clothes in the washing machine but realizes she’s missing her wedding ring. She searches for it in the machine, getting the top half of her body inside, with the obvious tension escalating. It’s not “if” the machine will turn on, but “when.” No sooner does this thought pass through, Nani accidentally turns it on, and the spinning drum rotates her body violently a few times until it stops. That could be enough to kill Nani, but it doesn’t.

The impact of this death comes from how long it goes on. The slasher from In a Violent Nature impales his hooks into a young woman, pulling and twisting, until flesh and bone are torn for the much talked about yoga death scene. Nani survives the spin cycle in Grave Torture, but her hair is now tightly stuck inside, the ensuing struggle to pull herself free looks as excruciating as it must feel. Nani then dies by ripping her entire face clean off, revealing the red muscle and veins underneath. If you think she will scalp herself, Joko Anwar, as usual, goes that extra step further.

Anwar's 2019 folk horror Impetigore is a fine example of the sadistic and memorable deaths he puts into his stories where a curse on a village damns every baby to be born without skin. While a menacing supernatural presence has invaded the nursing home in Grave Torture, Anwar keeps it ambiguous (until the film’s last half) whether it caused the face-peeling death or if Nani really was just clumsy like her husband claimed. Grave Torture earns a mention alongside horror’s other shocking deaths for the inventive use of an everyday piece of machinery, and the special effects.

Death scenes in horror shouldn’t be predictable or bland, not in a genre where the stakes are (usually) high. Outside of Grave Torture and In a Violent Nature, recent movies have tested how far on-screen violence can go and then went further. Last year saw a lot of movies bring gore back to horror, after a period of much tamer mainstream horror releases. From Riley's (Joe Bird) possession scene in Talk to Me to the entirety of When Evil Lurks, you no longer have to look to B movies to quench your bloodthirsty. TV has followed suit, as Chucky upped the gore in Season 3, with an umbrella that made it rain blood, gravity nearly turning a slashed throat into a decapitation, and two new fatalities for Devon Sawa. Hopefully, future horror movies will bring the inventive gore that Joko Anwar has always brought to his films. What's next? A killer dishwasher? 

'Annihilation': Stunning Sci-Fi Psychedelia

Alex Garland is hands down one of the most exciting voices we have working in science fiction. After the years he spent turning out first-rate speculative scripts, both original concepts like 28 Days Later and adaptations like Never Let Me Go, Garland made his directorial debut with the tight, contained A.I. masterpiece Ex Machina. With his sophomore feature, Annihilation, Garland freely adapts from Jeff VanderMeer's novel of the same name, drastically increasing the scope of the story he's trying to tell and his ambition along with it.

The film stars Natalie Portman as a grieving soldier-scientist, Lena, who hasn't seen her black-ops husband, Kane (Oscar Issac), for over a year. He left on a mystery mission and never came back. Until one day, he does, wandering into their home absent-minded, distinctly different, and coughing up blood. In short order, Lena finds herself with the opportunity to take the same mission as her husband -- head into a mysterious, dangerous place known as Area X in search of answers. Turns out the government has sent in multiple teams; soldiers, animals, even drones, but Kane is the one and only thing to have ever come back.

So Lena heads into Area X alongside four other female scientists and doctors. There's Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the distant team leader, a psychologist, who has seen team after team disappear into Area X and needs to know what's in there for herself; Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), an EMT with a history of addiction who is like a lit flame, always threatening to become a dangerous blaze; Radek (Tessa Thompson), a meek scientist with a history of self-abuse, and Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), the friendliest of the bunch, who harbors a dark truth of her own. Together, these wounded, brilliant women head into mystery, and the moment they cross into the luminescent, rainbow-tinged perimeter known as "The Shimmer," the whole world transforms into a kaleidoscope of impossible biological deviation as they seek to get to the heart of what's causing the mystifying mutations that greet them at every turn.

This is the top-line story, and one that will thrill genre fans looking for some bravura sci-fi storytelling. Garland pulls freely from VanderMeer's novel, but fair warning to book fans out there -- this is not a straight adaptation, so go in with an open mind. However, what Garland captures so gorgeously is the slow-brewing intrigue and terror that seems to capture the whole of the human experience; the biological, the psychological, and the spiritual. Annihilation targets that gestalt with a heady brew of wonder and horror, and reuniting with a host of his Ex Machina collaborators, including composers Geoff Barrow and Ben Salibury, production designer Mark Digby, and cinematographer Rob Hardy, Garland creates a vision of spectacular exploration that is, disquietingly, both familiar and otherworldly in equal measure.

Their journey takes them to all manner of stunning, sickening, and occasionally soul-crushing creations, which crawl beneath your skin and lodge in your brain. There is a wonderfully quick and cavalier approach to some of the violence -- nature doesn't care; it preys, it evolves, it is hideous and beautiful all at once, but it is not sentimental. That's not to say Annihilation is without emotion, but there is an undercurrent of scientific impartiality to the whole hallucinogenic affair. By the time we arrive in the third act, which is sure to spark a debates and turn off a whole lot of your average entertainment-seeking moviegoers (it's easy to see why Paramount was afraid of this movie), Annihilation has transformed into something of a surreal art piece. A choreographed dance of despair and perseverance, the push and pull of human strength and weakness, Annihilation's final act is all-out psychedelia that may leave those only looking at the top-line story scratching their heads when they walk out of the theater.

Because Garland isn't just telling one linear tale about a deadly expedition, he's working freely and heavily in the realm of metaphor. Underneath all the screaming bears and shark-toothed gators, Annihilation is a film about self-destruction, in all its forms. The film tells you this over and over again -- from the biological failures of cancer and aging, the ways the body turns on itself, to the multitude of human capacities for self-destruction -- infidelity, self-harm, addiction, et cetra --  Annihilation is a stunning, sweeping metaphor for the way human beings tear themselves apart. It's wildly ambitious, occasionally alienating, and consummately perplexing; an irritant to the mind and spirit that demands self-reflection. Garland makes a few minor stumbles on the way to his vision, but his vision is rendered in complete, elegant detail, and even if it takes some time to digest, it's a meticulously prepared feast for the eyes and the mind. 

‘American Psycho’: Almost a Quarter of a Century Later, Mary Harron’s Bloody, Satirical Stab Is Sharp as Ever

Every now and then, I get met with gasps and outraged expressions when I admit that I have never seen a particular movie deemed a classic. “But you’re the movie buff!” my friends and family exclaim, “How have you never seen that movie?!” These periodic reminders of what a terrible cinephile I am jolt me into action, and I skulk away in shame to see what I have been missing out on. This was recently the case with American Psycho. When my dear colleague and fellow horror fanatic heard I had never checked out this modern classic, she insisted I finally check it out and review it. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it, I guess.

So down I sat, with my TV backlight set to red for maximum effect, and took in the stylish, hilarious, and surprising glory that is American Psycho. And perhaps what I love about it the most is that it is a thinker. It’s not one of those cut-and-dry things that wraps the narrative up in a neat little bow for you. It demands that you look deeper and really consider what you are seeing. Who's perspective is trustworthy? Is what I’m seeing actually happening in the real world of the movie? What is it trying to say to me, through the rich and deeply subjective language of cinema? Not only did I enjoy American Psycho, but I will definitely need to rewatch it, enjoy it all over again, and think even harder.

American Psycho is adapted from the controversial novel by Bret Easton Ellis, with a hard-won writing and directorial effort from Mary Harron, who was fired from the movie and replaced with Oliver Stone, before being brought back on with her first choice for the lead role, Christian Bale. Bale plays Patrick Bateman, a city-slicker investment banker who is living that dream ‘80s New York lifestyle that the media tells us is aspirational but actually looks ugly, boring, and painfully pretentious. He and his yuppie coworkers endure each other’s company at one fancy restaurant after another, only ever seeming to have surface-level conversations about the big accounts and which fancy restaurant to go to next. These aren’t friends – they’re accomplices in a lavish facade. Patrick’s lifestyle demands that his entire existence be this facade. So, it seems only natural that he is hiding, deep down, more sinister traits beneath his sharply-tailored suits and perfectly maintained skin.

He narrates to the audience his inner feelings of nothingness, and how he knows that beneath the glossy exterior, there is a black hole void of emotion. Greed and disgust are the only two characteristics he can think to apply to himself, and he feels that there is some force approaching his life that will cause his mask to slip, and for his true self to be exposed. This arrives in the form of Paul Allen (Jared Leto), a rival coworker whose suits are always a little sharper and, to the absolute horror of Patrick, his business cards a little snappier. When the guys take turns whipping out their business cards to show off, you see the red mist descend over Bateman’s eyes when he sees Allen’s; impeccably printed, complete with a watermark. I mean, the goddamn gall of the guy. There’s obviously no logical response to this other than for Bateman to kill him!

Allen’s murder sets the dominos falling, and Bateman begins to attack people. First a homeless man and his dog (if you were wondering just how psychotic our protagonist was, look no further than him stomping a poor street dog to death), then sex workers. He gradually becomes more unhinged, to the point where he is running stark naked around his apartment building, covered in blood and wielding a chainsaw. His murderous rampage eventually comes to a head when he confesses his many crimes to his lawyer over the phone and has a moment of out-loud realization that he is a terrible person and a danger to others. The many layers of pretense are peeled away, leaving a hollow man in the place of someone who, on the outside, seems to have it all.

Just when you think you’ve established that Bateman is the titular American Psycho, in saunters Willem Dafoe to make you question that distinction. With his wide eyes, manic grin, and over-the-top energy, he enters the picture as a lawman investigating Allen’s disappearance, and there is a wonderful scene in which he and Bateman face off. Bateman’s mask is well and truly slipping by this point, and he is not doing a great job of coming across as someone who totally wouldn’t murder his colleague. Dafoe plays along, never quite allowing Bateman to believe that this is just a routine call with no implication of suspicion.

His colleagues and other associates don’t come across much better. American Psycho is a biting satire about the pomposity of the 1980s Wall Street high life. Every time a man swings open his cardholder, it is accompanied by a metallic swish akin to a knife being unsheathed. These are their weapons. Much attention is drawn to the lavish minutiae of this lifestyle. Suits, meals, wines, and watches are all status symbols that never seem to bring any sense of pride or fulfillment to their owners. Everybody in this world is chasing approval from peers who are too wrapped up in their own identity crises to validate anyone else’s.

Perhaps the most telling moment before Bateman’s big confession is when, much to his irritation, he momentarily slips off his headphones to tell his girlfriend, “I just want to fit in.” The dark comedy emerges from the pettiness and hypocrisy of it all. When an obscenely rich and handsome young man gets so infuriated by a business card, what can you possibly do but laugh at him? In a world where everything seems so high-stakes, the meaninglessness of it all is one big joke.

The one real presence in Bateman’s life is music. You can’t even really call it his joy, or his vice, because to him, music is more of an intellectual puzzle, one that the listener shouldn’t just kick back and enjoy the sounds of, but ponder, question, and understand the context and background of. He frequently plays various albums of the era, from Huey Lewis to Phil Collins, while lecturing people about the deeper meaning of it all. For a man who is without expression, music is his one little window into humanity. It reminds the viewer of Alex’s fixation with Lovely Lovely Ludwig Van in A Clockwork Orange, in that a person completely lacking emotion can still be so moved by something as inherently emotional as music.

The movie was Christian Bale’s real breakout performance as a leading man, and he threw himself right into it. As someone who still enjoys Gillian Armstrong’s charming take on Little Women, it is remarkable to see Bale make the leap from loveable simp Laurie to utterly despicable Bateman in just a few short years. Talk about range! It’s a physically grueling role, one that requires much control to portray a man who has little. The finest details, from the way he purses his lips to how he propels fury with just his eyes, come together to form a believable character in an unbelievable world.

Bale can say a thousand words with a simple gesture, and never once holds himself back from what could be embarrassing or uncomfortable to a less skilled or confident actor. He puts himself up there with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Anthony Hopkins, whose most powerful weapon when playing madmen is their unpredictability. Is he going to explain the emotional core of one of Beethoven’s symphonies to you, or hack you to pieces? Or both? This precarious balance of charm and danger is what makes him so captivating, and what keeps the movie from falling into pure comedy in its more outlandish moments.

Mary Harron directs the piece with a sharp and very particular view to framing it all as quite ludicrous. It’s not unlike Fight Club or The Wolf of Wall Street, in that it presents a very damaging form of masculinity and, through clever writing and direction, urges the viewer to see it as dysfunctional, delusional, and really quite pathetic. The problem is that not every viewer is so good at reading between the lines, and some come out of such movies with an effective manual on how to live as a “real man.” According to Roger Ebert’s review of the movie, Harron considered it a feminist piece, a condemnation of a certain vein of masculinity that causes harm not only to the wider world but to those who embody it. No matter how nice his watch, how finely embossed his business card, how blindingly white his bedsheets and underwear, Bateman lacks meaningful relationships, and contributes nothing to the world except a dollar amount. And the true psychosis is expecting to find fulfillment in a life like that. 

This Found Footage Horror Movie Is a Masterclass in Making the Absurd Terrifying

Even with the biggest budgets and the best special effects, it can be hard for a horror movie to make a ridiculous concept scary. Whether it be a failure to adapt the source material or a film not understanding its own premise, countless scary movies can't make the odd terrifying. Most of these failures are due to a lack of commitment from the project's creators; something that, luckily, the team behind Frogman had in spades. Directed by Anthony Cousins, this found footage horror sees a trio trying to track down a wild cryptid that one of them swears he saw years before. Their journey takes them down an insidious path filled with maniacal cults, strange magic, and of course, a huge frog.

All of these aspects may appear more laughable than scary at first, but it's the film's willingness to envision what these would actually look like that makes it so unsettling. It lures viewers in with its wildness, making them laugh in disbelief like so many of its characters before confronting them with the terrifying truth our cast must suffer through: this is all real. By showing how the strangest ideas would be utterly petrifying in reality, it manages to elevate what could have been ridiculous into something nobody would ever want to face.

Frogman's initial plot is one that many people have seen in found footage horror movies before: a group of people with a camera who don't know what they're getting themselves into. It follows the listless Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk), a wannabe videographer whose career (and in many ways, his life) was defined at the age of 12 when he captured “alleged” footage of the titular creature on a family trip. Viewers have criticized his evidence for years and, to prove his findings, he ropes in his friends Scotty (Benny Barrett) and Amy (Chelsey Grant) for a trip back to Loveland, Ohio, hoping to once again spot the creature.

The film's first half is filled with disappointment; our characters struggle to find any real proof and, after a hilarious encounter with a man in a bad costume, begin to believe this story of a humanoid frog who can hypnotize people and uses a magic wand to cast spells is just a ploy for tourism. It's a doubt that can easily rub off on viewers and make them suspect that Frogman represents something deeper, the creature acting as a weird receptacle for Dallas' sense of inadequacy — until it appears. And not only is everything rumored about the Frogman true, but it is so much more disturbing than anyone could have expected.

Frogman, at its core, is a cryptid story, and it draws on a sense of local horror that has made these kinds of tales persist for generations. The Frogman of Loveland, Ohio is a real story, and while it may not feature a wand and a devoted cult, this tale drives people to visit the town in the same way the film's main group does.

While it may be funny to laugh at the tale of Frogman like Dallas' friends did, that hilarity stops once viewers see the actual creature creeping along walls and turning people into disgusting masses of warts and ooze. Audiences learn of a cult that sacrifices innocent townsfolk in the hope that the frogman will spare them, a kind of human horror that recontextualizes the aspects of this myth —even the magic wand — into something truly horrific that can and will harm the characters that viewers have come to care about. Frogman is a concept riddled with ridiculousness and hilarity (like many of the best folktales) but the way this plot takes every part of it seriously makes viewers understand that mythological creatures like this may sound silly until you actually have to face one.

While Frogman becomes an unnerving rollercoaster through the film's commitment, there are moments when even its enthusiasm can't make up for some of the plot's shakiness. The motives behind the cult spiral out as the film goes on, and while Frogman's abilities are terrifying, the movie doesn't explain how or why it terrorizes people in these mystical ways. Still, even with those flaws, the film captures the true terror of cryptids by drawing on the fear of the unknown that has made them a mainstay of most cultures. It captures the essence of these pieces of folklore through the absurdity of their concepts, drawing viewers in with the kind of creepy yet laughable story that they've heard in their own lives. It gets them invested by showing them a narrative they can recognize before making its most ridiculous parts viscerally real. And, by recognizing the goofiness of folklore like Frogman for the haunting warnings they are, the movie makes audiences understand that it's easy to laugh at these stories when you hear about them — but it's hard to survive if you ever find yourself caught by them. 

Willem Dafoe Was Already in a Nosferatu Movie

If you're itching to see more Dafoe and more vampirism after seeing Nosferatu, you needn't yearn in vain. The actor has already appeared in a send-up to the oldest surviving vampire film, the criminally underrated Shadow of the Vampire. Released in 2000 and directed by E. Elias Merhige, it's a fascinating historical horror set not during 19th century London and Transylvania, but in 1921, during the production of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Instead of our leads being Count Orlok or Ellen Hutter, this is the story of director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) and the bloodthirsty vampire he brings in as the lead.

Shadow of the Vampire, more than being a Nosferatu remake, is based on the peculiar performance of German actor Max Schreck that is now etched into horror legend. He may have only been on-screen for nine minutes, but his legend endured for over a century after. The story goes that Schreck took a method actor's approach to his turn as the vampire count, appearing on-set in full makeup and not breaking character while he was there. His unsettling and gruesome appearance stunned the cast and crew, and though his performance was celebrated, not much is known about his life and career today. Shadow of the Vampire decides to take the mystery of Schreck and run with it, positing the idea that in Murnau's feverish dedication, he manages to cut the middleman and find an actual vampire to play Count Orlok.

This is who Dafoe's character is, an ancient vampire now more monster than man, one the director has found and is desperately trying to wrangle in the hopes of making the most realistic vampire film possible. The director keeps him on a leash with a bargain. If "Schreck" performs in his film, while killing as few people as possible, he can have the lead actress Greta Schröder (Catherine McCormack). The rest of the cast and crew are entirely unaware of the lead's true nature, believing him to be what Schreck was in real life: a dedicated, if rather eccentric, thespian. In that concept, there is room for a lot of comedy and fright, but a great deal of tragedy as well. Dafoe brings his flavor to a character that has been referenced everywhere, from highly successful roleplaying games to SpongeBob SquarePants.

It's uncommon for a vampire so far removed from his humanity to be the sympathetic star of a film, rather than a villain or an obstacle closer to a zombie. From his bald head, pointed ears, and set of jagged teeth, to his general stature — this is not the suave kind of vampire aristocrat by a long shot. However, it's implied that he was, a very long time ago. He once was a grand figure of terror with power and dominion; now he lives in a cave, feeding on bats, and is reduced to being a dog at the heels of a mortal. He is alone in the world, and as far as he knows, he cannot turn others into vampires, and he has no coven or brood. It's a demeaning existence he cannot escape from, and all he has left is the hunger — though some targets are more prized than others. Why he wants Greta in particular is left up to the viewer, but there is something about a powerful and immortal creature being reduced to this that tugs at the heartstrings.

Despite that crushing loneliness, there is an undeniable humor to Dafoe's performance. It's a classic fish-out-of-water comedy about a fearsome vampire going completely unnoticed by the cast and crew on a film set. Viewed as a consummate professional by his cohort, they're wowed by his acting prowess as he snatches a bat and sucks its blood. Alternatively, he acts like a curmudgeon who bumbles about the set, almost as if he wasn't cast but simply showed up one day. Despite being on this very serious and artistic film shoot at the height of German Expressionism, he genuinely doesn't care about the silly little vampire movie, his performance, or his colleagues. This drives Murnau up the wall, who can be a tyrant to everyone on set except for his star. The vampire acts like a diva, being difficult on purpose, so the director must make costly accommodations and compromises. Given the real-life stories of monster directors — though the ones told here about Murnau aren't entirely accurate — it's very funny to see this kind of switch in dynamics.

After his seminal performance as Pennywise in It and It Chapter 2, it's no surprise that Skarsgård's Orlok made for another wildly effective rejuvenation of a classic horror villain. Schreck did so much with Nosferatu in the short time he was onscreen, joining Lon Chaney in the league of actors who can create a silent monster with incredible body language. The two others to play this role are Doug Jones in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, another remake of the horror classic, and Klaus Kinski in 1979's Nosferatu the Vampyre directed by Werner Herzog. Kinski, a collaborator of Herzog, played the role with a creepy yet pathetic desperation, but Dafoe's take on the character might just be the best. You both feel the distressing weight of his age and deterioration and laugh with him at the expense of a filmmaker who should never have meddled with the vampire in the first place.

Willem Dafoe found his way into Nosferatu's grasp thanks to his own distinctive interests and ambition. "I saw The Witch, and I liked it so much. I arranged a meeting with [Eggers]," he revealed, speaking with Collider's Samantha Coley. "We liked each other. Then I did The Lighthouse, which was a fantastic experience, and I think it's a very good movie. Then I did a little part in The Northman, which I really enjoyed, and now I get to do this." As Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, Dafoe is the eccentric yet incredibly earnest occult specialist and the unsuspecting ally that Depp's Ellen is in desperate need of.

One of Dafoe's most impressive and enduring abilities is his chameleon-like ability to morph for any task set before him. When you first imagine a character actor, you may (understandably) think of those who can play absolute opposites in every sense. From physicality to vocal characteristics, to demeanor, ethos, or purpose, character actors are often defined by the severity of contrasts in their career. Dafoe, however, displays a rare form of versatility in the range that spans between Shadow of the Vampire and Nosferatu​​​​​. The two roles stand in literal opposition to each other regarding protagonists versus antagonists, but they both draw from similar realms of eccentricity and peculiarity. They serve completely different purposes, but one of Dafoe's strongest aspects is his fondness for over-the-top, colorful choices with such specificity that they are still entirely believable, appropriate, and satisfying under vastly differing circumstances.

Not to over-simplify, but Dafoe completely switches sides, going from the team of amorphous evil to considerable good between Shadow of the Vampire and Nosferatu​​​. However, the most refreshing difference is the evaporation of mystery. In Nosferatu, despite his undeniable lunacy, Dafoe's character is wholly honest. So much so that seemingly every notion his character holds is true, perhaps even righteous. While his turn in Shadow of the Vampire is delicious in its oddity, offering new subtleties to discover upon every rewatch, his part in Nosferatu is that of the film's most forthright character. No cryptic motivations or subtexts surround his Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. This man is fighting the plague of Nosferatu with all he can muster.

Nosferatu, with the team involved, is unsurprisingly and viscerally gratifying at every turn, and Dafoe, as always, bolsters every minute of screen time he's given.