Vampires

1975 · Stephen King · 439 pages · Horror

Salem's Lot is Stephen King at his most structurally ambitious, using the vampire as a lens to examine the rot already present in a small New England town. The horror is as social as it is supernatural, and the slow corruption of the town's population is more disturbing than any individual scare. It remains one of the finest vampire novels written in English.

2017 · 4 Seasons · Netflix · Animation / Action / Dark Fantasy / Horror

Castlevania did something the entire entertainment industry had spent decades failing at: it turned a video game into a great television show. Four seasons of gorgeous animation, morally complex characters, and action choreography that set a new standard for the medium. The pacing stumbles in the back half, particularly once Dracula exits the stage, and some storylines in seasons three and four feel stretched thin. But the highs are extraordinary, the character work is far deeper than anyone expected from a Konami adaptation, and the fight sequences alone are worth the price of entry. This is the show that proved video game stories could work on screen.

2019 · 6 Seasons · FX · Comedy, Horror, Mockumentary

What We Do in the Shadows took a cult film premise and stretched it across six seasons of increasingly absurd vampire comedy without ever losing its bite. The ensemble cast found new ways to mine laughs from centuries-old undead roommates navigating modern Staten Island, and the show's willingness to go bigger and weirder with each season kept it from settling into a comfortable rut. Some later seasons pushed the absurdity past the point where the emotional stakes could keep up, and the mockumentary format occasionally felt more like habit than intention. But at its best, this was one of the funniest shows on television, a comedy that made immortality feel hilariously mundane.

2013 · Stephen King · 531 pages · Horror

Doctor Sleep is less a sequel to The Shining than a novel about recovery that happens to share characters with one. King writes addiction and sobriety with the authority of personal experience, and adult Danny Torrance is a more nuanced character than the child version ever was. The villains are the weak link, but the emotional core is strong enough to carry the book past them.

1998 · Stephen Norrington · 120 min · Action, Horror

Blade is a lean, mean, R-rated action film that proved comic book movies could be cool, violent, and profitable years before the genre dominated Hollywood. Wesley Snipes owns every frame, even when the script can't keep up with him.