Writer/director Ryan Coogler’s horror movie, Sinners, presents a new vampire story from a unique perspective. Taking place in the American South during the Jim Crow era, the 2025 movie Sinners shows two outlaw brothers, both played by Michael B. Jordan, who return to their hometown, hoping for a fresh start, only to find themselves fighting off a horde of bloodsucking vampires.

Given the story, A-list actors, and creativity on display so far in its trailers, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is unsurprisingly one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2025. Sinners certainly presents a distinctive tale as a vampire film in the old Deep South, making for a fresh horror film from the director of Black Panther. However, there are many similar period horror films that can curb audiences’ appeтιтes as they wait to see Sinners in theaters.

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Van Helsing (2004)

An Action-Packed Monster Movie About The тιтular Vampire Hunter

Directed by Stephen Sommers, who masterminded Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy movies, this 2004 film shows Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing, who is tasked with traveling to Transylvania to kill Dracula and defend humanity from his wrath. Van Helsing takes Universal’s classic monster movies and mashes them all together in a thrilling, superhero-style blockbuster revolving around the legendary beast hunter. The movie’s campy tone and dated VFX may be off-putting to some. However, this film still shines as an over-the-top horror-action adventure that features unique interpretations of iconic characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and Van Helsing himself.

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Salem’s Lot (2024)

The Latest Adaptation Of Stephen King’s Beloved Vampire Novel

Based on the novel by Stephen King, Salem’s Lot follows a writer who returns to his hometown just as an ancient vampire and his human familiar move into an abandoned house and start turning people into unᴅᴇᴀᴅ bloodsuckers. Since King’s original novel was written in the 1970s, this modern adaptation by director Gary Dauberman stays true to the source material by setting the story in that time period. While both Sinners and Salem’s Lot have different settings, the skeletons of both stories are very similar, with the latter creating a frightening and immersive Gothic nightmare that consumes small-town America.

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Interview With The Vampire (1994)

The Story Of A Vampire’s Eternal Life Through History

Based on the novel by Anne Rice, this classic horror film by director Neil Jordan depicts the life of Brad Pitt’s Louis de Pointe du Lac as a vampire over the centuries. The story goes from Louis’s beginnings as a human plantation owner in 18th-century Louisiana to raising a young girl who was also turned into a vampire. While it isn’t an action-packed horror blockbuster like Sinners, Interview with the Vampire stands out as a dark and tragic odyssey through history as Louis travels the world, burdened by the curse of immortality.

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Byzantium (2012)

A Family Of Vampires Attempt To Make A New Life For Themselves

Another film from Neil Jordan, Byzantium depicts two vampires, a mother and her daughter, on the run from an ancient cabal of vampires as they hide out at the тιтular seaside resort. Like Interview with the Vampire, this movie presents the struggles of a vampire family as they spend centuries trying to survive in a harsh, unforgiving world.

The film also parallels Sinners by presenting a family of two trying to start a new life while facing off against an order of the unᴅᴇᴀᴅ. However, Byzantium has stood out for its exploration of womanhood as its female leads experience terror and oppression in a patriarchal society over hundreds of years.

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The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023)

A Vampire Horror Film On The High Seas

Another Bram Stoker adaptation, The Last Voyage of the Demeter follows the crew of the тιтular ship as they fight off the dreaded Count Dracula after he stows away with them. At first glance, this movie seems more comparable to Alien than Sinners thanks to its story and visuals. But like the latter movie, The Last Voyage of the Demeter takes its characters and traps them in a claustrophobic setting as a ravenous vampire picks them off one by one. It also takes an oft-overlooked part of Dracula‘s story and expands it into a haunted house movie set at sea.

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Shadow Of The Vampire (2000)

A Metafiction Horror About The Making Of A Cinema Classic

Long before he faced Count Orlok in 2024’s Nosferatu, Willem Dafoe played the vampire himself in director E. Elias Merhige’s overlooked indie gem. This meta-horror fantasy depicts the making of the original Nosferatu in 1920s Germany. However, it puts a unique spin on this real-world production by having Orlok actor Max Schreck be an actual vampire posing as a method actor. Shadow of the Vampire thus carries the distinct status as a Nosferatu remake and a fictional biopic. It’s also a clever commentary about the lengths one will go to in the pursuit of creating art in the film industry.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

A Classic Horror Film From A Legendary Director

As the тιтle implies, this film from director Francis Ford Coppola is a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel. Since this is a Coppola movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula naturally presents a stunning and ambitious vision of horror that remains the closest embodiment of Stoker’s work yet. As the film crosses oceans of time to tell Dracula’s tale of love and loss, it immerses its viewers with a harrowing and epic dark fantasy. With an all-star cast, stunning visuals, and high production values, this Victorian-era horror film still holds up as one of the best vampire movies ever made.

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Nosferatu (2024)

A Magnificent Retelling Of The World’s First Vampire Film

Set during the early 1800s, 2024’s Nosferatu centers around a clairvoyant woman and her husband as they become tormented by a sinister vampire who moves to their town and spreads a killer plague in his obsessive pursuit of the former. Just like with Sinners, Nosferatu has been a part of the modern resurgence of vampire movies with a genuinely terrifying vision of Count Orlok.

The way that director Robert Eggers merges death and desire in this film re-invokes the true horror of the vampire and makes it relevant, despite it being set in a bygone era. Overall, with his remake, Eggers takes a classic silent film and transforms it into a beautiful but deeply unsettling masterpiece.