Recession Indicator: Vampires are BACK. 🧛🏻♀️
But I mean...did they ever really go away?
I have always been enamored with vampires. Maybe it’s their immortality, supernatural abilities, sleek and stylish wardrobe, but above all, it’s their undying yearning for forbidden love. It all sounds so romantic.
Naturally, I’ve watched many vampire film from every rendition of Dracula—NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR (1922) to BLACULA (1972) to Kathryn Bigelow’s NEAR DARK (1987) to Park Chan-wook’s THIRST (2009) and most recently Ryan Coogler’s SINNERS (2025).
And because I’ve always romanticized vampires, I completely disregarded their true nature: they are actually parasites—literal parasites who invade your home and suck the living life out of you for their own livelihood. I was reminded once again after watching SINNERS of how vampires are an allegory for white supremacy and colonial figures. After all, vampires are revered for their elite status, unnatural beauty, and pale skin. They have always played their roles as takers, colonizers, and parasites no matter how “ethnical” they try to be when “feeding.”
I’ve recently came across this tiktok by cousinofworms, titled “vampirism and fascism.”
It’s about a 9 minute deep dive on how the comeback of vampires align with the rise of fascism in our country. Particularly because vampire stories make us sympathize with the aggressor and promote conservative values in gender roles and more.
As someone who has lived through the 2008 recession and plan to make a film about this time period, I can’t help to recall how one of the biggest vampire films came out in 2008: TWILIGHT. It’s been very surprising to everyone how the series made such a cultural impact. Hell, even I folded and tried reading the book for the first last year. Sadly, I did not get pass the first 100 pages (maybe one day.)
The entire series is now on Netflix and have been trending #1 for several weeks. Not to mention that The Twilight Saga book series is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. At the time the books and movies came out, it was very clear how Stephenie Meyer’s mormon views influenced the characters and storylines of Twilight. I mean, don’t get me started on “imprinting” and the display of repressed sexual desire.
Back then, I was barely out of high school and didn’t see how Twilight’s behemoth cultural impact aligned with America’s worst economic time period since the Great Depression. I was merely a fish who couldn’t see the water but now I see how our fascination with vampires can and have contributed to our collective conservative thinking.
But especially as we are now entering a real flight, a real crisis period where we have these ideas and conversations around women bodily autonomy and trad wifery being back in a big way and being popular, being contrasted with a loss of abortion rights and more and more laws to take right away from women as a collective, combined with stoking these fears of immigration and these fears of the other coming in to take your things, combined with parasitism and vampirism that is late stage capitalism and the way that it requires a loss of individuality and a loss of self and a folding into the collective, but not as a person with autonomy and respect in individuality but as a cog in a machine, meant only to work.
-cousinofworms
After complaining about how we need more vampire films that are not direct rip-offs from DRACULA, Ryan Coogler answered my prayers and told a very provocative and thoughtful take on vampires that I desperately didn’t know I needed.
With the impending recession on the horizon, I do hope people will be conservative with their money BUT NOT their values and viewpoints. It’s moments like these where we have to actively be more cognizant and vigilant against propaganda even if it comes in the form of a seductive and action-fueled vampire film!