Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Manages to turn a highly dubious concept into a subtle and deliciously mordant comedy.

Boston Globe by Jay Carr

He's (Dafoe) the stuff bad dreams are made of. He's also the best movie vampire since Schreck's original. He deserves a bloody Oscar.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

"Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck." I put quotes around that because it's not just a line for a movie ad but the truth: He embodies the Schreck of "Nosferatu" so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference.

Baltimore Sun by Chris Kaltenbach

Paints a vivid and darkly humorous picture of a world where directors are all-powerful and vampires are real; whether you want to buy into either fantasy is up to you. I did, and had a grand old time.

Mr. Showbiz by Michael Atkinson

Might be the most original film of the year.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Kicky, elaborately constructed fantasy.

Dallas Observer by Gregory Weinkauf

Without question, Shadow of the Vampire is a stately and elegant horror film, interwoven with delicious strands of black comedy.

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

At once wildly metaphorical and distressingly literal-minded, Shadow of the Vampire tries, with mixed success, to be scary, funny and profound all at once.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Diabolically amusing without plunging into the Mel Brooks zone, and it's smart without being pedantic. And it's genuinely scary at times.

New York Post by Jonathan Foreman

A clever, funny, extended joke about ruthless directors, method actors and the power of the cinema.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Willem Dafoe's performance in Shadow of the Vampire is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

For all its stentorian performances, though, Shadow of the Vampire is a bit much, from the detailed period sets to the final, bloody scene.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer

It's a marvelous, resonant joke that never quite succeeds: Stretches of the film resemble a Dario Argento horrorfest crossed with a Mel Brooks spoof. But the director, E. Elias Merhige, and his screenwriter, Steven Katz, occasionally bring some rapture to the creepiness, and Dafoe's vampire, with his graceful, ritualistic death lunges, is a sinewy, skull-and-crossbones horror who seems to come less out of the German Expressionist tradition than from Kabuki.

Slate by David Edelstein

There are times when Dafoe's accent strays into Billy Crystal Yiddish, but the notion of Vlad the Impaler aging into a finicky old Jew has its own kind of piquancy.