Vampire (2011 film)
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| Directed by | Shunji Iwai |
| Written by | Shunji Iwai |
| Starring | Kevin Zegers, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Amanda Plummer |
| Music by | Shunji Iwai |
| Cinematography | Shunji Iwai |
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Production
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Convergence Entertainment, Rockwell Eyes, V Project Canada Productions
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Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes |
| Country | United States, Japan |
| Language | English |
Vampire is a 2011 dramatic horror-thriller film that was directed and written by Shunji Iwai. It was first released on January 22, 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival and is the first film he has directed in English. The movie stars Kevin Zegers as a teacher who believes himself to be a blood-drinking vampire.
Simon (Kevin Zegers) is a seemingly ordinary biology teacher that spends much of his spare time caring for his Alzheimers-ridden mother Helga (Amanda Plummer). This ends up not being the case, as Simon believes himself to be a vampire and spends much of his time looking at online sites for suicidal women who would make for easy prey. One such woman, Jellyfish (Keisha Castle-Hughes), is tricked into believing that she and Simon will both be killing one another, only for Simon to drink her blood after he administers sleeping pills and draws blood from her. Along with his vampiric hobby, Simon tries to keep his mother indoors by putting her in a straitjacket-esque contraption tied to several large balloons. It's when Simon meets Laura (Rachael Leigh Cook) that things begin to unravel, as she grows obsessed with him to the point where she breaks into his home. Things begin to further devolve when Renfield (Trevor Morgan), a man who also believes himself to be a vampire, emerges onto the scene and is far more violent than Simon ever dared to be.
Iwai was inspired to create Vampire after he "got the idea about a serial killer who was more like a friend to his victims" and liked the question of "if the victims are working with the killer in helping kill themselves, would it be considered murder or aided suicide?". While further developing the idea for Vampire Iwai wanted to "strip away the romantic idea behind vampirism", but also wanted to explore the idea of a vampire that is "not a supernatural creature but rather a real human being". He based the character of Simon partially on "the strange habits that we all have" and stated that if he had not come up with the idea of Simon, he would have likely passed on Vampire's theme. Iwai penned the script for Vampire himself. However, as Iwai had difficulty with spoken English dialogue, asked the performers to "not follow the script too closely and try to be more spontaneous so that the dialogue would be natural."
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