Vampire in Brooklyn is actually a working-class romance.

by Harriyanna Hook

This year’s Halloween blog post is dedicated to the cult classic film Vampire in Brooklyn, which is full of pirate ships, sex, art pieces, and garlic bread. This movie is portrayed as a Horror-Comedy. I love horror and comedy, but those two factors aren’t what sold me on it. What made me fall in love with this film was its secondary romance storyline. Vampire in Brooklyn ain’t perfect, but the love story between Rita, played by Angela Bassett, and Justice, played by Allen Payne, won me over completely.

I wanted to watch the movie for Angela Bassett, because we have been studying her work lately in my African American studies class, and because it was about vampires, since I watched Sinners like every other Black person in America did in 2025. I was curious to see how stories of Black people and the supernatural were portrayed in the 90s, long before it became somewhat more mainstream in the late 2010s. While this is typically referred to as an Eddie Murphy film, which makes sense because not only did he play a major role in creating the story and writing the screenplay, he also plays three different characters in it. To bluntly put it, I only went into this movie for Angela Bassett and the vampire subject; I did not care too much about Eddie Murphy’s contributions to it.

When it comes to Eddie Murphy, I no longer particularly give a fuck about his work because Norbit ruined him for me. Norbit is pretty much a film that reeks of misogynoir and fatphobia. As talented as I think Eddie Murphy is, Norbit gives me the major ick because of how mean-spirited the piece is towards fat Black women, along with treating domestic abuse as a joke. I don’t hate too many films, but I absolutely hate this movie.

Most of Vampire in Brooklyn focuses on Max (Eddie Murphy), a vampire who stalks a Black woman, Rita, whom he knows is half-vampire and whom he wants to make his partner. When Max isn’t causing chaos in New York City, the story moves towards Rita and her dynamic with Justice. I mostly knew Allen Payne from watching a lot of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne growing up, so I know he plays romantic men well. I wasn’t particularly shocked by his performance in this film. I ate it up, actually.

Within the first 5 minutes of watching Rita and Justice’s interactions, I already knew where this was going. Detectives who deeply care for each other’s well-being? They were very much Dana Scully and Fox Mulder-coded characters, in my opinion. These two characters came from the hit 90s supernatural drama, The X-Files, in which a good chunk of the series revolves around the two main FBI co-workers and later friends who don’t want to admit they have strong feelings for each other. I wrote about them a while ago in my piece, “What The X-Files Taught Me About Love,” if you would like to learn more about their dynamic. The X-Files was pretty popular at the time of this film’s release, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had taken some inspiration from the show when writing the screenplay.

Rita is grieving for her sick mother, who recently passed away, and struggles with having nightmares, a situation I understand entirely too well. Justice is one of the few people at her workplace who doesn’t treat her as less than because of personal hardships. While the main love story of the film was between Rita and Max, as Max’s goal was to seduce her, I kept waiting for Justice to return to the screen because it was nice to see how in love he was with Rita. I love watching and reading materials with Black women being loved on properly. Max simply wanted Rita because he wanted her as his vampire partner, and he is very much a creep, following her everywhere to get her to go on a date with him. Justice, on the other hand, had gotten to know Rita and liked her for who she was.

I thought it was really cute when Rita offered to make Justice coffee when he took her back home, as a subtle hint that she liked his company and wanted him to stay longer. Real lover girls understand, haha. When you like someone, platonic or romantic, you do small things to show you care about them. I did wish we had more moments like this in the film, but the movie was primarily focused on Max’s shenanigans to turn Rita into a full vampire.

Back to the black nathalie sancoeur.