Dracula Untold
Dir: Gary Shore
Starring: Luke Evans, Sarah
Gadon, Dominic Cooper, and Charles Dance
Bram
Stoker’s iconic monster finds an origin story in “Dracula Untold”, though the
vision of darkness is substituted with a less immortal creature for a more
morally human leader forced into a desperate decision to save his family and
homeland. Director Gary Shore incorporates most of the typical subgenre tropes
and attempts to lavish up the story with breakneck CGI that mostly feels like a
distraction.
Vlad (Luke
Evans), retired from Impaling, lives a peaceful life with his wife Mirena
(Sarah Gadon) and son (Art Parkinson). Peace doesn’t last long as the head of
the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper), demands one thousand
Transylvanian boys for his forces including Vlad’s only child. Faced with this
decision Vlad chooses defiance, though he is severely undermanned for the
impending war. Knowing defeat is imminent Vlad follows folklore into a cave
where he meets an ancient supernatural force (Charles Dance). Vlad is granted
the power to defeat his enemies but in order to regain his mortal life he must
resist the temptation to feed on blood or risk being a creature of the night
for eternity.
Much of the
vampire mythos remains intact here; blood serves as life while sunlight and
silver are still objects of weakness. Vlad is portrayed counter to the brutal
tales that typify his legend, here Vlad is an honorable family man and diligent
ruler. However, his past exploits of ruthless warfare are still presented,
given explanation by an upbringing in captivity and a motivation to strike fear
into his enemies. The progression of Vlad's character happens rather quickly
and somewhat sloppily, it soon becomes a waiting game for the impending
encounter with the dark force. This meeting is the shining moment in the film
particularly because of the use of veteran actor Charles Dance as The Master
Vampire. Dance controls the scene with a menacing allure, playfully taping his
long fingernails across the drawn sword of Vlad before easily disarming him.
It’s easily the scariest, a loosely used term here, in the film.
The
progression of Vlad’s abilities are exaggerated by an abundance of computer
graphics, thousands of bats uniformly assisting in battle sequences as Vlad
orchestrates with a composer-like performance. While in other scenes hand to
hand combat shifts with a mix of hyper movements that are reminiscent of the
producing company’s other property “300”. It never works as nicely as it
should, mostly because it’s not implemented with any subtlety to enhance the
scene instead feeling more distracting and overdone.
Luke Evans
does a suitable job as Vlad, his fear for his family and regrets of his past
come through nicely in a few scenes. With “Dracula Untold” you are getting
everything the trailer conveys, simply an effects driven horror film that
offers the viewer a safe Halloween option at the movie theater. Unfortunately
for genre fans looking for the frightening Dracula from Stoker’s tale, this
origin is fairly tame.
Monte’s Rating
2.00 out of 5.00
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