Sept. 07, 2003 - 5:48 pm
i borrowed this one from Teresa at work. there's a small group of people there that do some dvd borrowing every couple of weeks and someimes Margaret tells me i need to borrow the dvds too after her. this was one of those.
this film is about the making of Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922). that film is sometimes called "the most realistic vampire movie ever made." by today's standards i personally think it is almost comical, but i can see it being insanely scary if you saw it in the 1920s. Shadow of the Vampire is half true story, half fiction. it pretends like the person who played Count Orlock actually was a real vampire and that the director made a deal with him, sacrificing the life of his lead actress, to get him to star in the film.
it's a lot of crap really and it's not believable. especially if you've seen the original film and know any of the truth behind it. if you watch this without having first seen Nosferatu, then you don't understand half of what's going on in the plot. well, actually i had seen the film and i still didn't always understand what was going on.
this movie is just not well done. people are constantly mumbling for one thing. another is that it has terrible editing. there's all of this jumping between scenes that doesn't add anything to the story. it's just disorienting and you wonder why the editor/director is not telling you more about what's going on in a scene. i guess there's not a good preparation or intro to all of the scenes is what i'm saying. my advice is don't watch this movie. at all.