Advised by the ghost of Edgar Alan Poe, a third-string writer investigates a series of murders.

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Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), a third-string writer of witchcraft fiction regularly drowns his bitterness in alcohol since the death of his daughter. At a book signing in the bookstore-cum-hardware store in a small American town, he is approached by the local sheriff, who wants to co-write with him a book about strange killings in the area: a dozen children have disappeared. Hall decides to stay, and, guided by the sheriff during the day and the ghost of Edgar Alan Poe at night, he investigates a band of teens who are accused of being vampires and the cause of these murders...

Francis Ford Coppola offers a self-portrait in the form of a horror flick, mixing sorcery, spiritualism and fangs in a style alternating between extreme aestheticism and bloody scenes reminiscent of a bad TV series. It's easy to lose oneself in the worlds between night and day, death and life, and that of those who are neither one nor the other. Hall's wanderings in search of inspiration are often merely confusing, and only the apparitions of Poe as a literary advisor are interesting.