The story of the Dracula, famed vampire count of Transylvania, has
been told innumerably though the last century, first appearing in the ‘20s
silent-film version “Nosferatu”, then in ‘30s played by Bela Lugosi, then in
the ‘60s by Christopher Lee, later Gary Oldman, Gerard Butler…and so on and so
on. At this point the character’s been cinematically portrayed almost as much
as Santa Claus and finding original ways to approach Bram Stoker’s original
text has become all the more difficult to pull off without drifting into camp or
self-parody.
Like Francis Ford
Coppala’s take in 1992, this year’s “Dracula Untold” goes back to the original
legend of Vlad the impaler, the eastern-European prince that inspired Stoker’s
novel. However, unlike Coppala’s overtly gothic and melodramatic version, this
Dracula prequel aims for dour instead of dark and rustic instead of romantic,
envisioning the character as a hero of his people, set with a difficult
decision.
Having been
raised as a Turkish slave, Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans), the prince of
Transylvania,
tries to protect his son and the other young males of his 13th
century kingdom by becoming something more than human; a monster. One day, on
the way to enemy headquarters, he wanders into a mountainous cave where he
finds an old haggish vampire (Charles Dance) who grants him the power to
destroy the invaders. Vlad then opts to temporarily become a vampire, under the
condition that, if he can resist drinking human blood for three days, his
humanity will return. It is then up to him and his swarms of bats to defeat the
Turkish armies single-handedly without eating his wife Mirena (Sara Gadon).
It would be easy
to tear apart this ponderous attempt at brand recognition, but I think what
makes it worse than being ridiculously awful, in a way that made “I,
Frankenstine” almost fun to warn people against, is that “Dracula Untold” is
just painfully boring. The majority of
film is framed in medium close-ups, all the performances toggle from earnest
whispers to 300-esque shouting, and the war scenes are cut so quickly and are
so muddied with CGI bats that you can barely tell what’s going on. The
backgrounds are darkly lit and the visual pallet is color-corrected in drippy
greys and muted blues. With the exception of Dominic Cooper as the Turkish
warlord, sporting a perfectly trimmed New Kids on the Block hairdo and saying
things like “I will have my one-thousand boys!” everybody else looks miserable to be
in this the movie and every character looks miserable to be in this world.
Despite the
attempt at reinventing Dracula as something like a DC superhero character and
despite its forgiving ninety three minute run time, I found myself dozing off
just about every other scene. Visually the movie is unappealing and the
characterization of Dracula is so neutered—desperately excusing every inhuman
or monstrous thing he may have ever been known for—that it leaves nothing left
to fuel the drama. In four years, you might catch this on TNT or the USA
network and by the half-way point you’ll regret having started it but will be too
lazy to change the channel, and that is the ultimate fate of “Dracula Untold.”
Originally published by the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2014
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