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Writer, Reviewer & Film Journalist
​Joey Romero’s Vampira (1994): A Filipino Vampire Story
Exploring Joey Romero’s Vampira (1994), one of Filipino horror’s most unexpectedly political vampire films.
Vampira (1994), one of the few films by the lesser-known Filipino director Joey Romero, takes place in a gothic world that still feels strikingly familiar to fans of the vampire horror cinema. Set in contemporary Salvación, a region on an eastern Philippine island, the film centres on Cara, a female vampire who longs to escape her vampirism after inheriting it through a generations-old family curse.
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Vampira reframes the vampire not as an invading predator in the lineage of Bram Stoker’s iconic Dracula, but as a tragic romantic figure who is an object of human desire. Vampires have long been objects of romantic fascination – hello, Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise – but Vampira approaches romantic horror from a markedly different angle. Cara experiences an intense human longing for belonging even as she struggles with a curse that has plagued her family for generations.
Vampira (dir. Joey Romero, Philippines, 1994). Film poster.
​Love and sex drive the narrative in Vampira, as Cara’s desire to end the curse doubles as a search for romantic love. Cara’s vampirism becomes a metaphor for her sexuality, something powerful and unruly that must be repressed in order for her to be deemed acceptable within Filipino society. Crucially, this repression is inseparable from the country’s colonial history. The film frames vampirism as an indirect consequence of the legacies of Spanish and American rule. During this multi-century period of colonial rule, from the 16th to the 20th centuries, Christian morality and patriarchal norms were imposed as tools of social control. Cara’s “curse” in Vampira reflects the dark legacy of Filipino colonial history.
Vampira’s Plot and Production History
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Despite these heavy themes, Vampira was conceived as light entertainment. Vampira was produced by Regal Entertainment, one of the Philippines’ most durable film and television studios. Regal Entertainment has long been attuned to the rhythms of popular taste since its launch in the early 1960s. It is responsible for the crowd-pleasing Shake, Rattle & Roll (SRR) horror anthology film series, which is the longest-running series in the Philippines. Regal Films has a track record of featuring Filipino supernatural elements, including, in the first of the SRR films, featuring an airborne vampire-like creature called the “manananggal”.
Joey Romero, as the director of Vampira, also has a firm grounding in the Filipino film industry. As the son of Eddie Romero – a pivotal figure in Filipino cinema who influenced directors such as Quentin Tarantino and whose career ranged from nationalist epics to exploitation horror – Joey Romero inherits a fascination with monstrosity as the product of human cruelty. Romero’s film is a distinctly modern take on the Filipino figure of “the aswang,” a supernatural being who appears normal by day and becomes something else by night.
Film still from Vampira (dir. Joey Romero)
Cara, the lead protagonist in Vampira, played by the Filipino actress Maricel Soriano, belongs to the reclusive Noche clan of Salvación, a once-feared dynasty that appropriated the land of local peasants. In retaliation, the peasants cursed the Noche family and all its descendants to vampirism as a form of living death from which there is no reprieve. Cara’s father, a vampire who passed as human long enough to marry her unsuspecting mother, bequeaths her this curse, which lies dormant until full moons.
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​In the opening sequences, Cara’s dying father tells her that only by returning to Salvación can the ancestral curse be lifted. However, before he can tell her anymore, he dies mid-sentence. Before Cara can process this, her mother hustles her away just in time to avoid her brother Miguel (Jayvee Gayoso), a more predatory vampire. Soon after, Cara arrives at the town church in the middle of the night and, after fainting at its door, is taken in by the kindly priest (Ernie Zarate, a familiar casting from SSR). By morning, she has reinvented herself as Paz and claims amnesia whilst sheltering with Arman (Christopher De Leon), a young widower raising his daughter, Len-Len (Patricia Ann Roque), who is also an orphan in the priest’s care.
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Class and Gender within Vampira
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Class conflict and its links to colonialism in the Philippines are central to Vampira’s backstory and are familiar themes in Filipino popular cinema. As Janelle Rowsell observes, “the horror genre in the Philippines has been used to confront and navigate both Spanish and American colonial trauma. Namely, the hauntings of ghosts, demons, and spirits in the Filipino horror genre are used to navigate the colonial remnants that continue to impact Filipinos".Vampira, has this historical wrongdoing at its centre. The curse afflicting the Noche family stems from the violent displacement of Filipinos from their land.
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These themes align Vampira with a wider tradition in Filipino cinema in which the supernatural functions as a historical reckoning. With these themes, Joey Romero echoes his father’s allegorical treatments of class and hierarchy in films like Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon? (1976). Eddie Romero’s period drama follows a naïve rural peasant whose journey across the Philippines during the fall of Spanish rule becomes an awakening to the unjust legacies of colonial power. This focus on colonialism is also present in Filipino horror cinema. In Vampira, the vampire’s suffering is inseparable from inherited historical guilt that is brought about by rigid class dynamics in colonial society in the Philippines.
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Male vampires are also marked by blasphemy. The older brother, Miguel, taunts the younger, Cesar, accusing him of weakness for fearing hell if he acts on his impulses. “If I do it, I’ll go to hell,” Cesar insists. His brother scoffs: “Do you think they’ll accept us in heaven?” He continues, “Even before we were born, we were destined for hell.” Their dialogue recognises vampirism as a type of spiritual exile. Yet, alongside the film’s class politics, Vampira focuses on the interior life and suffering of its female protagonist. During full moons, Cara stubbornly clings to self-restraint, feeding only on animals.
Film still from Vampira (dir. Joey Romero)
During full moons, Cara stubbornly clings to self-restraint, feeding only on animals. Her brother, by contrast, embraces vampirism. He snarls that humanity deserves repayment for the curse it inflicted on the Noche family. As Cara yearns to find a way to break the family curse, vampirism reflects the gender divide. Whilst for the men, it is a license for violence. For women, it is an exhausting discipline of denial.​​​
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Catholic Guilt in Vampira
Christian morality is apparent in Vampira. The priest reassures Cara that God is above all creatures. His sermons also remind his congregation that all sin can be forgiven through Jesus Christ. Purity, in the context of Filipino genre cinema, is not just about sexual chastity. It is also about spiritual identity.
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Cara’s relationship with Arman is shaped by this morality. He idealises her virtue and confesses that he sometimes wishes never to discover her true identity. Cara’s anonymity becomes central to Arman’s desire. When he declares his love, he also says he hopes she is not already married to another man. Cara realises that Arman’s love depends on maintaining this image of purity. During the first night of their honeymoon, she resists the urge to feed on Arman’s blood and flees their marital bed to feed on wild animals outside. Cara’s vampirism is managed through an ability to suffer quietly so that love might remain possible.
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Filipino female vampires often retain an essential moral innocence, including a willingness to sacrifice themselves for others. This symbolism is also apparent in films like Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B (2016) or earlier provincial-set aswang cycles of the 1950s–70s. In these films, female vampires are often depicted as morally conflicted monsters who suffer from their condition.
Notably, Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B follows Jewel, a young woman secretly living as a manananggal who feeds on abusive men. Vampirism is therefore reframed as a grim form of vigilante-style justice. Jewel’s violence, however bloodthirsty, is motivated by an (albeit questionable) desire for justice. Such figures are eye-catching because their monstrosity is used for revenge.
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Vampira’s place in Filipino Horror
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Revenge is a notable motif in Filipino cinema. For instance, in Halimaw sa Banga (1984), a cursed earthen jar becomes the conduit for a spirit burned alive and crucified, returning to exact revenge.
​Promotional poster for Ang Manananggal sa Unit 23B (dir. Prime Cruz, 2016).
Similarly, Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara (1974) centres on betrayal. After being poisoned by her jealous cousin, Barbara returns as a vengeful ghost in her ancestral home. In both cases, horror functions as a reckoning with the memory of uncommemorated violence.
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Compared with these films, Vampira distinguishes itself by emphasising forgiveness. By contrast, Joey Romero offers a quieter, more melancholic mode of Filipino horror. Vampira is less invested in destroying the vampire than in the possibility of redemption. This theme becomes most explicit in the film’s final sequences. After Cara’s brother attacks Arman, Cara is seized by a mob. She escapes and seeks refuge in a church on the night of a full moon.
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Driven to despair, she believes herself beyond saving. Arman’s desperate struggle to remain with her culminates in his confrontation with her brother, whom he stabs, leading to the brother bursting into flames. Parallel to this, a priest prays the Our Father, underscoring that this fight is not merely a physical conflict but a spiritual battle for Cara’s soul. When the curse is finally lifted (“the Lord has finally heard our prayers”), it is not through killing the vampire, but through forgiving the vampire.
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Cara’s vampirism invites sympathy. She is positioned as an indirect victim of colonial and patriarchal harm. Vampirism is a reminder of a dark historical past that continues to shape the present in the Philippines. In imagining a cure, Romero gestures toward the fragile possibility of healing from colonial trauma. Through Cara’s innocence, Vampira offers a distinctly Filipino vision of horror in which monstrosity serves not as a call to vengeance, but as a mode of remembrance and mourning. It is this insistence on history and forgiveness that gives Vampira its place within Filipino cinema.
YouTube upload of Vampira (1994), directed by Joey Romero