Willem Dafoe plays Count Orlock/Max Schreck (the German actor who played Nosferatu in the original), who despite an agreement with his director (Malkovich) and bribed by the promise of the leading lady Greta (Catherine McCormack), cannot resist taking a bite out of the film crew on and off set. Inevitably Orlock's hunger for blood and Murnau's consuming desire to finish his picture results in a battle of wills between director and star, between the human and preternatural. Needless to say it would take a gifted and visionary filmmaker to make this conceit work, but second-time director Merhige (his first film Begotten apparently begins with God disembowelling Himself with a razor) has clearly bitten off more than he can chew.

On one level the film attempts to be a camp and humorous homage to the silent era, which if more subtly played might have been convincing. But Shadow of the Vampire also reckons itself a serious meditation on the nature of cinema, suggesting the camera as vampire, sucking life from those who serve it. This is hardly a new idea and in Merhige's hands the theme becomes sloppy and heavy-handed. Malkovich overplays the driven director who stops at nothing to get his film finished, rekindling his trademark overacting which Being John Malkovich (1999) had so well parodied. Addressed by his film crew as 'Herr Doktor' and attired in long white coat and goggles he dominates the film. As a result the ghoulish bloodsucker Count Orlock, is never properly explored. Instead he hovers at the edge of the frame, scowling and clicking his fingernails together peevishly, upstaged by Murnau for most of the picture. One of the films' most interesting moments is when Orlock (in virtually his only sustained speech) relates his experience of reading Dracula and the sadness he felt at the portrayal of the Count's "downfall". Living alone in the castle, with no servants Dracula is reduced to preparing a meal for his guest Jonathan Harker, his status (mirroring Orlock's own, reduced to playing a hammy vampire) diminished. Derided, Orlock becomes even more of a joke figure in the eyes of the film crew, the loneliness of his character (and by dint that of Nosferatu and Dracula) never explored by a film which could have been so much more inquisitive.

In choosing to reinterpret one of cinema's most loved classics Shadow of the Vampire was already skating on thin ice. It could have been an enjoyable pastiche, but even as comedy the film fails. Leeching on to a far superior story (and therefore a ready-made audience of Nosferatu fans) Shadow of the Vampire is the real vampire here, stealing life from the German original. The film fails to be a good horror film, a fit homage to Murnau's silent masterpiece or any bit as compelling as Stoker's gripping novel. In short it falls short of anything but ridicule.

Reviewed by Caroline Millar