Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no question that the Twilight series has become one of the most popular media franchises out there. The story that it tells is a fairly established one about the love that emerges between a young human woman and a vampire.
Somehow, it managed to hit all of the right beats, so it’s no surprise that it continues to be enormously popular. Fortunately for big fans of the film, there are quite a few other supernatural romance movies out there to satisfy the craving for watching love stories between humans and other beings.
Interview With The Vampire
For many years, Anne Rice was the undisputed master of the Gothic romance, and her novels about vampires were bestsellers throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. This enormously successful adaptation of her first novel, starring Hollywood heartthrobs Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, brought out the simmering romantic feelings between Louis and Lestat, two vampires who are bound together by the curse of immortality. There’s an undeniable chemistry between the lead actors, both of whom turn in some of the finest performances of their careers.
Tuck Everlasting
The romantic story between a mortal and an immortal is one that can be done either well or poorly, and Tuck Everlasting is in the former category. Focusing on the love that springs up between a young woman and a boy who has drunk from the Fountain of Youth, it’s a sweet and rather simple story, but one told in such a way that it manages to cast a spell on the audience. Its ending, in particular, is the very definition of bittersweet.
Beastly
The story of Beauty and the Beast is one of the most enduring in popular culture, and it has seen numerous versions come to the screen. One of the most recent is this film, which puts a new spin on the old story. The film undeniably has its charms, and it’s rather refreshing to see the ways in which the film updates the story so that it feels timely and relevant for a new generation of viewers who want to watch the timeless romance.
Warm Bodies
If there’s any figure that’s proven as popular in the imagination as the vampire, it would have to be a zombie, and the 2000s and 2010s saw a flurry of various zombie films. Warm Bodies does something new, however, injecting a bit of romantic comedy into the zombie film genre.
It’s also a bit of a spin on the timeless tale of Romeo and Juliet, and the film ends up being surprisingly sweet and touching for a film about the undead.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
There have, of course, been numerous retellings of the classic vampire novel by the writer Bram Stoker. Few, however, have managed to be quite as gorgeous, sumptuous, and just downright good as this adaptation. With Gary Oldman in the title role, the film manages to create a Dracula that is more than just a horror villain but is, instead, a compelling sort of tragic hero, doomed to eternal life because of the death of his beloved wife and his own curse.
Thirst
Though many of the most famous entries in the supernatural romance canon have been made in Europe and the United States, in recent years South Korea has also emerged as a powerhouse of cinema. Films like this one are a reminder of why. Focusing on a priest who becomes a vampire after falling in love with his wife’s best friend, it’s a beautiful and haunting film that manages to bring both the horror and the romantic elements of its plot into focus.
Meet Joe Black
If anyone has ever wondered what would happen if the personification of death somehow managed to fall in love with a human being, then they need look no further than Meet Joe Black- a remake of a much earlier film. Though it was rather divisive at the time of its release (at least as far as critics were concerned), there’s no denying that there’s a powerful romance at its heart, and the fact that it stars Brad Pitt, a truly fine actor even in less than stellar films, manages to make this an appealing watch.
City Of Angels
This remains one of the best romantic films to come out of the latter half of the 1990s. Starring Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan, it focuses on the romance that blooms between an angel and a human woman after he gives up his immortality to be with her.
Though Cage has become somewhat infamous for his willingness to star in some truly terrible films--thus rendering him something of a camp figure--movies like this one show that he really does have what it takes to be a romantic leading man.
Near Dark
Kathryn Bigelow is a director that has, time and again, shown that she has the power to show new sides of old genres. In this case, she turned her attention to the vampire film, telling a story about a young man who gets turned into a vampire and ends up falling in love with the young woman who did it to him. The film is a remarkably gritty one, looking at the darker side of the vampire romance, but there’s no question that the love between the young man and the vampire woman is the beating heart of the film.
Ghost
No list of supernatural romance films would be complete without mentioning Ghost, the classic film starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg. Though it might seem a bit cliched from the perspective of modern viewers, its story about a man who visits his beloved in the form of a ghost is one of those that was destined to wring tears from the audience at the time of its release. It manages to hold up surprisingly well, due in no small part to the tremendous strength of the performances.