Shadow of the Vampire (John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe)
Well, it's an interesting concept. What if, during the making of a horror movie, one of the actors playing a monster is actually killing off the cast and crew in real life? Sounds like it would make for a great work of fiction, certainly Scream-worthy. Trouble is, in a film like Shadow of the Vampire, the historical fact sometimes falls backwards on itself. As the plot progresses and it becomes clear the monster is meant to be portrayed as insatiable and unstoppable, the audience's knowledge of real life events hampers the tension and suspends the plausibility of the concept. The rug gets pulled out from under the viewer's feet.
No horror flick worth its weight in plasma plants itself fully in realism, but because Shadow of the Vampire uses the backdrop of the filming of the 1922 F.W. Murnau classic Nosferatu, suspension of disbelief is nearly impossible to attain, even for the most novice of film buffs because although history tells us the making of the silent film was fraught with some obstacles, tales of on-set deaths or of rampant vampirism have never existed.
Nevertheless, director E. Elias Merhige strives to present an off-kilter tale when fiction becomes reality. When Murnau (John Malkovich) casts Max Schreck (not Dreamworks's Shrek incidentally, played by Willem Dafoe) as his lead in the lavish production, the distorted actor requires all people working on the production refer to him by his character name of Count Orlock. It is soon revealed that Murnau and Schreck have struck a deal whereby, at the conclusion of the filming, Schreck can have the leading lady Greta (Catherine McCormack) all to himself. Of course, this includes her gaping neck, replete with blood-pumping jugular.
We're meant to believe Defoe is a vampire, and he certainly does a fantastic job impersonating the original Schreck, but Malkovich's performance is almost too flamboyant for the dark material. The screenplay, as penned by Steven Katz, meanders in sections where it should be tightening its grip on the audience. Instead, there are too many interludes that bounce the reality check back to full focus and diminish the suspense of the film.
I'd like to take a second whack at viewing Shadow of the Vampire, because the references to Bram Stoker and movie-making in the 1920's were probably lost on me the first time around. But I have a funny feeling the result will be the same: if the point is to make a documentary, then you can play with the idea that Schreck merely thought he was a vampire. By implying he might really have been one, we're plagued with issues of plausibility. How could the movie have been done differently? I don't know. Maybe with more murders and grisly supernatural mayhem, a more sinister conclusion might have been that the studios released the film and its mounted publicity became a charade, with executives pretending the cast and crew were still alive when in reality they weren't. No... no... that won't do... there's that pesky old history getting in the way again.
