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 Films such as The Vampire Lovers (Roy Ward Baker, 1970), The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) and Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994) all provide the opportunity for their vampire (anti)heroes to speak about their condition and so elicit the audience’s sympathy. Some vampires (including Louis in Interview and others such as Blade [Blade trilogy, various directors, 1998, 2002, 2004] and Selene in Underworld [Len Wiseman, 2003] and its sequel) have such a loathing for their condition that they actively hunt and kill their own kind. Such a transition clearly lends a certain sense of humanity to the vampire for those identified talk of their human past, of those they have left behind and the horror of the vampiric infection.

Emerging out of this multitude of vampire films

30 Days of Night: the vampire as terrorist?

Given their actions, it could be argued that the vampires of 30 Days of Night function as metaphors for terrorists and terrorist actions

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 Fundamentally, the representations here are more homogenised and inoffensive; the film is marketed as a romance to increase its mainstream appeal.
 In short, if the representation of Eli in Let the Right One In is subtle, the representation of Cullen in Twilight is practically subversive using the barest minimum of the codes and conventions of the horror genre to signify his vampire status. Why he is represented in this way?

Twilight is a mainstream movie with a big production company behind it. Initially, the film was in production for three years at Paramount before being put into pre-production by Summit Entertainment. When released it grossed over £70 million in the US and Canada alone. How does a ‘vampire’ film make this kind of money?

Horror and vampire movies are often associated with a Goth or sub-cultural audience demographic – something likely to alienate many people who consider themselves part of mainstream society. Therefore, much like Let the Right One In, the codes and conventions of the horror genre in Twilight are blunted and represented in a more generic way to avoid disengaging a mass audience, while the codes and conventions of romance are promoted to attract them. This also has the effect of making the film’s ideological messages more far-reaching.

Sexuality and abstinence

Ideologically, Edward Cullen’s passion for blood is a metaphor for the sexual urge. America has a huge problem with teenage pregnancy and has the highest birth rate amongst teenagers in the developed world

it could be argued that by sticking closely to the plot and authorial messages of the original book, the institutions behind the film version of Twilight have infused it with an ideology of sexual abstinence where the central vampire character serves as a metaphor for the male sexual urge.
Regarding cross-cultural contexts, Twilight has also been a great success in Britain, a country that is similarly concerned with its teenage pregnancy rates. Interestingly, Robert Pattinson has been touted as a sex symbol by gossip and celebrity magazines – publications that are often aimed at a young female target audience demographic. This leaves us with one final question connected to Twilight’s cross cultural appeal and mass success – is Pattinson a poster boy for sexual abstinence?

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