Movie Review: Dracula Untold
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
It appears the train that started with Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy (1999) has yet to fully derail. Coming just four years after the failed revival of The Wolfman (2010), Universal, unable to tear itself away from the action-adventure spectacle when it comes to its movie monster greats, has decided to introduce a new film to the fold, this time revealing the origins of monster favorite Dracula in Dracula Untold. The results? A film that does its job: allows you to watch Dracula destroy everything around him in epic fashion, throws in a little romance, a dash of creepiness and gore, all while making you root for the lord of all the undead…and all in about 90 minutes. In other words, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s short and to the point.
Raised from a young age in the Turkish army, Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans) rules his kingdom of Transylvania that the Turks have allowed him to keep (with tribute, of course), having turned in his brutal warlord ways to keep his people, especially his wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and son Ingeras (Art Parkinson) safe. But when the Turks return to his land demanding a thousand young boys to raise in their Janissary corps (including Ingeras), Vlad balks and slays several of them, bringing war upon Transylvania. With almost no army and no weaponry, the battle seems lost until Vlad turns to the mysterious creature (Charles Dance at his creepiest) that lives in the mountains, who offers him vast power to defeat his enemies, but which will exact a terrible price. This all leads to Vlad’s epic clash against the Turks and his old rival/war buddy Mehmed (Dominic Cooper).
First of all, those thinking Dracula Untold is a campy effects-fest in the vein of The Mummy will be much mistaken, for better or for worse. The effects are certainly high and mighty, but the humor is much more sparse, effectively placed, but sparse. The focus is more on the tragedy, knowing full well that, despite his best efforts, he’s going to become the most famous vampire in all of fiction, and waiting for that inevitable moment. It does have its hokey moments, its sappy moments, its moments of supernatural “awesome,” but even at its low points it’s carried well on the shoulders of a cast that handles the proceedings as they should. They know full well they’re in a vampire movie, but they take it as seriously as the plot dictates. Cooper, playing Yul Brynner to Evans’ Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956), could clearly have hammed his way through the whole thing, but keeps his Mehmet surprisingly reserved. Charles Dance, also not known for avoiding scene-chewing when he has a chance, also presents a wonderfully creepy performance without going completely over the top. Probably the one highlight from an unexpected source, though, is the mysterious gypsy Shkelgim (Zach McGowan), who literally walks into the movie out of nowhere and starts doing an eerie Renfield-esque impression. It’s a small thing, but it adds levity where it’s needed.
Also, while the effects unfold onscreen as you would expect of big budget fare, there are moments that make you wonder if first time director Gary Shore might have been spending some of his $100 million budget in the wrong places. Castle Dracula’s interior is so clearly a revamped Hogwarts main hall you expect someone to stomp into the room screaming about a troll in the basement (as well as the monastery’s medieval equivalent to a gun closet looking suspiciously like the back armory in Helm’s Deep). Rumors of cut scenes including characters that don’t appear in the finished film seem likely considering the film has been cut to such a short running time. Action scenes seem abridged and overly complicated despite how interestingly choreographed they should have been. Thankfully, none of it makes the plot hard to follow, but the proceedings do feel a bit rushed at times.
In the end, Dracula Untold tries to be fun, but takes itself seriously enough not to turn Dracula into a joke, and for those along for the ride, it tries to add some subtle twists on some old tropes…and in an age where The Hobbit movies keep getting longer, an epic squeezed into 90-odd minutes isn’t always a bad thing. But in the long run, its inability to really make itself distinct and different will likely leave it lost somewhere amid the twisted, bizarre wackiness of the Underworld franchise or the teeny-bopper angst of Twilight and its various clones.
However, if it does well enough to finally get that big budget Creature of the Black Lagoon remake started, here’s to high profits and fun for all.
Seth Paul
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