Action-y it might have been (and without much critical acclaim), at least the vampires in 30 Days of Night were actually monstrous. For me it was a welcome respite, as was Let the Right One In, which also avoided the sexy – or at least made it somewhat sickening.
Vampires as angst-ridden supermen IS getting old. I’ll admit to watching the first two seasons of True Blood, though I started watching only to see Anna Paquin naked. That aside, my interest waned quickly. Much more into zombies though most zed movies are crap. 
I still like reading and writing about vampires. I don’t think the trope has been fully mined yet and can think of new variations all the time.
Vampires (and zombies) are such an easy character profile, already developed that allows all kinds of “twists” (you know, the vampire who is nice or empathic). It’s a mix and match of popular culture references, the self-perpetuating storytelling with no original thought or an idea. In the current climate, and especially in North America, I would think that the flood of movies and books is because vampires and zombies can be (if needed) killed in scores with no regrets as there is no – to my knowledge - any special group that will claim its heritage or special relationship. In other words, the movie or a book that features vampires or zombies will only be offensive to sophisticated, some would say snobbish tastes.
I never was into vampires or zombies and I blame years of exposure to Russian and Mitteleuropa novelists of 19th century.
Or spys in the '60s.
I’d pay to see a movie about real vampires taking back the night from the wannabe Hot Topic vamps.
Admittedly, I have not seen any of the Twilight stuff. But that’s where I draw the line. I mean, I was never a big fan of the genre. The word ‘vampire’ has always been more likely to make me lose interest in a movie than intrigue me. I thought the popularity of the Anne Rice books was strange. Despite this creeping strangeness, I did find the empathic vampire of the movie Interview with a Vampire interesting. Imagine being a monster among monsters, and living with that regret. But… some people seemed to really like imagining it. A lot.
And the wish to be a vampire was producing poetry. Good gods, the poetry it was producing. And this was in the early 90’s when I started to see this stuff, because the internet made it possible to smear this business far and wide. Now, I’m not unsympathetic to the goths. Black is a good color, and an interest in the morbid is at least a bromide against the casual resignation to the banal. But judging from the poetry – the motifs, topoi, metaphors and imagery involved – it was really just a different set of cliches, barfed up just as happily as the whole red-roses-moon/june business had been.
I will admit that this business of vampire poetry was done well in the Concrete Blonde album Bloodletting. It’s not my kind of music, and I did get weary with hearing it in the dorms all the time, but it did a better job than most things I had seen of invoking that sensibility that the failed vampire poetry was trying to achieve.
Then there was the Live Action Vampire. I knew people in the scene, and generally I felt the whole phenomenon was popular largely because it was at the time the only RPG that attracted girls in any numbers (though I suspected it was mostly what we now call a “sausage fest” even at that). And the girls showed up dressed kind of slutty. Yet, among its adherents, there was a strain of actual wish-to-be-a-vampire. I knew one guy who claimed he was a vampire, only he fed off of emotions. Oh, you get to be a type of vampire that nobody can ever prove you’re not? Wow, what a stud!
Now, if you’re with me so far, keep in mind that I have also had issues with the kind of roleplayers who think elves are just the most awesome-est ever. Of course, I wasn’t reading Tolkien, I was reading the folk ballad tradition full of elves murdering maidens and poisoning cattle. And I understand these people also tried to bring more fairy nonsense into the SCA. And I suspect the mainstream SCA types understand how silly they’re being better than the fairy-humpers.
But, you know, Buffy was good. The CRPG Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines was good. True Blood is a bit over-raunchy for my taste, but what the hell? But Twilight killed it. They went too far, because now Vampires were also Elves.
Now, mind you there has always been a confusion among mythical archetypes, and you could quibble about whether we’re talking about a vampire or an elf in Colleridge’s Christabel. But the tropes had solidified pretty well into our modern conceptions by at least Tolkien’s time. Now it’s no longer choosing from one detail from column A and one from column B. Now it’s more like trying to have pan-asian cheesecake burritos for breakfast. It’s an indulgent mess with all boundaries ripped away for no reason other than to be aesthetically decadent.
Of course, there’s the whole girl-meets-bad-boy trope mixed in. I understand, and I’m not putting that down per se. But hear me out, okay. That stuff belongs in the pirate genre. Won’t somebody please think of the children?
It’s zombies I’m fucking sick of. Why are zombies so hipster/ironic or whatever it is they are? I’m going to start getting into robots to stay ahead of the curve.
I don’t watch shows about vampires anymore. Werewolves are almost to that point. Zombies are coming in a slow 3rd, and will get there soon.
it’s time for cyborgs mutants and space aliens again. Saberhagen’s Berserkers would make for a great series.
Agreed. Aliens offer more possibilities and plot twists than vampires do, maybe they will return and kill off this sappy vamp trend.
I forgot about Vampire the Masquerade. I loved that concept, the politics of the clans and the society hidden beneath our gaze was really interesting.
I never liked vampires or zombie. Undead … no, really … STAY dead! Zombies have always struck me as particularly uninteresting … gross, decaying, slow-moving, stupid … what the hell do people see in them? It’s like low-level video game characters designed to train the player to shoot fast and accurately and die in droves in the process as … interesting? Unpossible!
Vampires, also dull. I like my blood inside me, please. No battening and feeding, sexual or otherwise, if you please!
The vampire format never bothers me, but its execution sometimes does.
Let the Right One In pretty much solidified my opinion that form doesn’t matter. If someone knows what they’re doing they’ll make a good story.
And I can never hate anything remotely related to BTVS.
I am waiting for this goldmine - vampires that keep zombies as pets. THe vampires can suck the blood and leave the flesh for the zombies to eat. They are a perfect symbiotic pair. And in the hand of the right writer it could actually be pretty good. The vampires would accidentally lose a zombie thus creating the zombie apocalypse and depriving the vampires of their food source. A weird three way battle ensues. Humans and vampires for survival versus zombies who are just really kind of gross. Come on someone needs to make this happen!
Vampires are totally non threatening nowadays, far to goody, goody.
Werewolves I just can’t suspend my disbelief enough because of the shape changing.
But zombies have still got it as far as I’m concerned.
In the movie Fido Zombies are kept as pets and servants. It’s a good one.
Why are werewolves more difficult to believe in than vampires?
Oh, and I keep wanting to say, and forgetting to:
Best. Thread. Title. Evah!
Well … I suppose a light-allergic humanoid entity who obtains nutrition from blood, and whose senses are more honed than that of a human, isn’t impossible – whereas a werewolf is impossible in a “Where is he drawing all that extra mass/fur/teeth/claws, is he borrowing it from the Hulk?” sort of way. But when you take into account the aversion to crosses, inability to cross a threshold without being invited, lack of visible aging, super-healing, the stake-through-the-heart requirement, etc., I think vampires lose the “realism” advantage.