The main thing I want to point out, here in the final post, is how the vampire genre has become increasingly disenchanted.
The evil in Stoker's novel is very much enchanted, and sacred objects, especially the Host, repel the vampires. The battle is explicitly supernatural, a struggle between Good and Evil. In Dracula the Christian faith is true and provides the means of resistance.
But as the vampire genre has developed and evolved over time, Stoker's privileging of Christian metaphysics has been displaced. You see this whenever the Christian weapons from Dracula, like the crucifix, are portrayed as impotent and powerless. In many modern vampire stories, the vampire will laugh at you if you hold a crucifix aloft and will chid you for being superstitious. In modern stories, vampirism is often given a biological explanation, like a genetic mutation. The occult has been eclipsed by science. The effects of garlic, silver, and sunlight are described as severe allergic reactions. In much of the modern vampire genre God is dead. The world is wholly disenchanted.
You also find the disenchanting effects of Protestantism in modern vampire stories, a loss of the sacramentalism in Stoker's novel. For example, in Stephen King's Salem's Lot crosses are effective against vampires. But there are two changes. First, these are crosses, not crucifixes. A very Protestant change. Also, there's a scene where Father Callahan holds aloft a crucifix, but because the priest lacks faith the crucifix proves ineffectual. Notice the shift away from the robust sacramentalism of Stoker's Dracula. What matters in Salem's Lot isn't the power of God but the power of faith. The weapons against evil have shifted from the objective to the subjective, from the ontological to the psychological. Recall how the most powerful weapon in Stoker's Dracula is the Host, the Real Presence of Christ. A real, material power. But in Salem's Lot, the power shifts toward the human and the mental, something wholly subjective. As Barlow says to Father Callahan in Salem's Lot, “It is your faith against my faith, Father. Is your faith enough?” The center of power now resides the human heart. Do we have enough faith? Sola fide! Believe! God is in your mind!
All this to share how you can trace the influence of modernity in the disenchantment of the vampire genre since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And this is an easy test anyone can conduct: In the vampire story you're reading or watching, when the crucifix--or cross!--is held aloft does the vampire even care?
The indifferent reaction of the modern vampire to the cross reveals much about the modern world.
