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The better vampire portrayals are where the former human self come into conflict with the new soulless predator, but the problem is the issue of emo. There's a serious difference between conflicted and mopey and all too often the vampire goes from fascinating and frightening to boring and gloomy. No one wants to see a man that cries a lot because his teeth are sharp and he's suddenly an immortal. I suspect most people would think the worst of the gloomy vampires is of course Louis de Pointe du Lac from Interview with the Vampire. 123 minutes of Brad Pitt moping and being ordered about by either an egotistical Lestat or a bratty Claudia. And occasionally eating a peasant or something.
If you go back to the first archetype, it's about sexuality and domination/submission, it's about the traditional and the modern colliding, and it's about the nature of "evil". He wasn't the greatest literary character of all time, but he certainly wasn't the ever-weepy Louis, Angel, Edward or Bill (or even the Dracula from the 1992 movie). Dracula was a beast under the guise of aristocracy. Dracula was evil, enjoying feasting on the innocent and even lusting for world domination. Dracula was an archetypal villain and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a modern (last 20 years) incarnation that bears any resemblance to him. You either have the purely monstrous, the mopey, or the "twist" vampire, like Let the Right One In.
I've never seen or read a vampire that I found to be truly engaging and interesting, other than the original.
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