Byzantium (2012)

Jules: Is it possible to make a film about vampires that is not a vampire film? The genre is perennial, with familiar tropes that filmmakers endlessly adjust to achieve varied ends. Power, class struggle, sex, death, eternal life and eternal damnation; each theme intersects vividly across the genre. Neil Jordan seeks transcendence for his antiheronies, from their plight, and their genre within film, with some success.

David: At the heart of many a vampire story sits the dramatic tension between desire or love and the hunger to devour, and next to that the ultimate existential question - would immortality be a prize or a curse? Neil Jordan’s third foray into romantic horror and his second vampire-duo story (after Interview With The Vampire - 1994) this time with a gender flip, wanders among some interesting themes, though perhaps with more convolution and less art than it could have done.