The film is mostly a fun, sweet character study, but it's enjoyable flow is marred periodically by its own desire to be cool.

Somewhere around the lovely scene of Tilda Swinton dancing, freely and wholeheartedly, to the old soul record, Jarmusch's M.O. becomes clear: 'Only Lovers Left Alive' is a hanging-out move, just with vampires.

This is a film that finds horror not in the extreme, but in the mundane. That alone makes it a worthwhile entry in a genre that it both inhabits and rises above.

For being such a cool movie, there is something shockingly lame and relatable about a vampire just sinking down the rabbit hole of his pet interests, collecting rare guitars, and remixing his own compositions into oblivion.