Dracula Untold Movie Review – 'Dracula Untold' is Dracula Defanged

Movie Review for Dracula Untold by Philbert Ortiz Dyposted on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 12:00 AM

Dracula Untold is a pretty radical take on the Dracula mythos. It ties itself to the characters historical roots, starting by introducing Prince Vlad of Transylvania (Luke Evans), who as a child became a slave to the Turks, and grew up to serve them as a great warrior. He returns to his home country to rule, and enjoys a decade or so of peace with his wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and his son Ingeras (Art Parkinson). But when the Turkish sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper) demands that Vlad send over another thousand Transylvania boys to train for his army, peace no longer becomes an option.

Faced with Turkish invasion, Vlad decides to strike a bargain with a monster living in the nearby mountains. He is granted incredible power, abilities that could allow the prince to save his people from the Turks. But the power comes at a great price: an insatiable thirst for human blood. The film wrestles with a pretty intriguing idea: the morality of monstrous acts in times of great desperation. Or at least, thats the idea in theory. In practice, the film just isnt equipped to explore the complexities of that theme. In its stead, it presents a rather bland, bloodless narrative that turns genocide into an act of heroism.

The film itself is at odds with its material. The historical basis for this story is a horribly violent figure. Its literary source is a classic of gothic horror. But the movie is targeted at the mass market, which means its massacres are ultimately bloodless, and its explorations of a murkier morality are pretty toothless in the end. A Dracula that is both bloodless and toothless just doesnt seem like the best of ideas to begin with, and yet this movie carries on. It scrubs away everything thats interesting or seductive about the character, and transforms him into just another noble figure in what turns out to be a generic superhero origin story.

Its all just kind of boring. Even at a trim ninety-two minutes, the movie drags on, unable to deliver anything distinctive in its execution. The bloodless battles, which seem to mostly involve CGI bats knocking people over, get tedious pretty quickly. The movie flirts with such dark material, but it staunchly avoids showing anything truly horrifying. The film doesnt even try to find clever ways to suggest the horror. At best, it puts together gimmicky sequences that only serve to obscure the action, like one that has much of a battle shown only as a reflection of a sword.

The only terror that can be gleaned from this movie is carried by the marvelous Charles Dance. The actor delivers a performance that recalls the glory days of Christopher Lee working at Hammer Horror. He seems to be the only one allowed to have any fun. Luke Evans is a fine enough actor, but this role is determined to keep him boring. For all the talk the film offers about the need to become a monster, the hero is never really confronted with a conflict worthy of that idea. And so Evans is left playing the same note throughout the whole movie.

Dracula Untold is meant to launch a new shared cinematic universe that features the classic monsters. If this movie is any indication, then the rest of this series will be pretty dire. If the dictate is to strip away everything monstrous from these monsters, then there really is no point to any of this. There might be a version out there of this movie that tackles the themes head on, and plays around with material darker than what one usually gets from the average action blockbuster. But it appears that commercial concerns have won over yet again, defanging this classic character.

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Dracula Untold Movie Review - 'Dracula Untold' is Dracula Defanged

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero