The disturbing horror movie Nicolas Cage “fell in love with”
Spanning more than four decades in the film industry, Nicolas Cage has carved out a remarkable career that places him among the most revered actors of his generation. Whether an intense, gritty drama or a thigh-slapping comedy, Nicolas Cage devotes himself fearlessly to each role, conveying authenticity at every turn.
Throughout his illustrious journey, Cage has curated a rich and diverse portfolio that defies conventional norms. His audacious choices and unique narrative approach consistently challenge expectations. Notable among his achievements, 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas and 2002’s Adaptation remain the strongest testaments to Cage’s skill. The two roles earned Cage Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Actor’, with his first and only win for the former.
Although these roles reaped Cage deserved decoration, he’s always appeared most at home in surreal, horrifying and vampiric settings. In 1989, Cage took on his first such role in Robert Bierman’s black comedy horror movie Vampire’s Kiss. Although the movie was a box office flop at the time, it later became a cult classic, not least because of Cage’s disturbingly masterful performance as Peter Loew, a literary agent grappling with his sanity.
More recently, Cage took on the role of Count Dracula opposite Nicholas Hoult’s titular character in Chris McKay’s Renfield. Released in April 2023, the movie taps into Cage’s fascination with Bram Stoker’s gothic fiction.
In 1990, the American filmmaker Edmund Elias Merhige released his experimental movie Begotten. Clocking in at 72-minutes, completely void of dialogue, the avant-garde horror study wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but its kinship to Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau’s classic Dracula-derived horror of 1922, earned Cage’s full undivided attention.
“From my point of view, it was very consciously made with the idea that this film is about the nature of cinema itself; the vampiristic nature of the camera as this invention that came out of the industrial revolution,” Merhige said of Begotten in a past interview with the BBC. “What always fascinated me was that when the camera fixes its gaze on its subject, it takes the flesh and the blood away and leaves just the shadow. It doesn’t have a life pulse, merely a shadow. The camera drinks your essence away from you but leaves this eternal shade.”
“I think Nosferatu has a great power,” he added, addressing the movie’s links to Murnau’s gothic masterpiece. “It endures today because the depiction of the vampire in that film is so ferociously original that it’s never been paralleled. Vampires are most effectively expressed in the cinema; you have this battle between dark and light, and what more perfect a battleground than the cinema? That’s all it is, shadow and light.”
According to Merhige, Cage was so beguiled by Begotten that he sought to acquaint the filmmaker. Upon meeting, the pair hit it off and eventually collaborated on the 2000 horror movie Shadow of the Vampire. With Merhige in the director’s chair and Cage co-producing, the movie boasted an Academy Award-nominated performance by Willem Dafoe.
“Nicolas Cage had the script,” Merhinge told the BBC of how he became involved with the Shadow of the Vampire project. “He’s a big fan of early Expressionism. Crispin Glover had given him a tape of my first film, Begotten. He really fell in love with it. We got together and clicked. Cage is an artist. He thinks like one, and that’s what made this film such a pleasure to do. There was a lot of belief in me.”
Watch the trailer for Shadow of the Vampire below.
