Is there a good Vampire movie?

In June 1918, it chanced that Mrs Hayes took a small house at Penlee, South Devon, not far from Dartmouth. She writes:

I had a friend staying with me, but otherwise we were quite alone in the place. One morning we came down to find in the middle of the parquet floor of the sitting-room the mark of a single cloven hoof in mud. The house and windows were very small, so it was quite impossible for an animal to have got in, nor indeed were such the case could it have managed so as to leave one single foot print. We hunted everywhere for a second trace but without success. For several nights I had most unpleasant and frightening experiences with an invisible but perfectly tangible being. I had no peace until I had hung the place with garlic, which acted like a charm. I tried it as a last resource.

from The Vampire in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers

I love a good horror movie. In fact, it could be said that I am very much into the supernatural. I’m terribly skeptical when people relate their experience to me, much to their chagrin I’m sure but I am like that. Yet I count reading a good ghost story a treat. Especially cosy afternoons would consist of tea, M.R. James and chocolate. Horror movies are also cherished in that manner. Rainy mornings, cold afternoons and thundery nights do wonders when watching a quality horror movie.

A good vampire movie is something so rare I’ve decided it doesn’t exist anymore.

I confess I almost dragged Twilight into this post, but something as manufactured and obsessive as those creations needs to be ignored. I’m talking about movies like Dracula (by Todd Browning), Nosferatu and more recently, Shadow of the Vampire. I know it’s a re-imagining of Nosferatu in a post-modern manner that delights and horrifies, but it’s marvellous – and it has Eddie Izzard in it. What’s not to love?

And yet. I can’t think of anything very recent that can stand the test of time. The Hammer horror films starring Christopher Lee, et al. defined a generation of crazy technicolour with spurts of inspiration. But hammy on the whole.

I read Anne Rice’s works in my tweens. Lestat was my dreamy rake for many months until Marius came along in a steamy bath scene and shattered my perceptions of what a red hot blood sucker ought to be. I was tingling with misplaced anticipation at the release of Interview with the Vampire, an R-rated movie which I couldn’t legally watch. Of course, I managed to watch it when it came out on video. My predictions about Brad Pitt being too boorish to portray Louis were accurate. Plus Tom Cruise is an alien so it was a disaster from the get go.

Francis Ford Coppola decided to ruin an already maligned historical figure in his majestically titled Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. I consider Gary Oldman one of my favourite actors. I spout lines from Leon and I’m very happy about the fact that I wasn’t just discovering him like the rest of the world with the release of the Harry Potter movies.

Gary Oldman is a crap vampire – through no fault of his own (except perhaps for accepting the role). Coppola made all the mistakes a director could in that one movie: Bad costumes (mainly for Oldman), horrid casting, blah dialogue and Keanu Reeves. Okay, okay, and one of the most atrocious accents put on by Oldman. I think it’s his general east European accent; he does it in Air Force One as well. The movie is well regarded in the vampire oeuvre. That baffles me.

Isn’t there anything else, specifically from the noughties, besides Let the Right One in?