Bloodless Dracula an Origin Story Not Worth Telling
Vlad (Luke Evans) is a Transylvanian Prince who, as a child, was forced to become a solider, and subsequently a highly valued general, in the Turkish military. Years later, returned home to his people, married to the beautiful Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and father to young son Ingeras (Art Parkinson), he receives word that childhood friend, now the Turkish Sultan, Mehmed (Dominic Cooper), wants 1,000 children for his army.
Unwilling to make such a sacrifice, but knowing his own military resources pale in comparison to that of his former comrade’s, the Prince makes a deal with a demon (Charles Dance) in order to save his people. Made vampire, he has three days to end this war before returning to his former mortal self. Problem is, if Vlad drinks even a drop of human blood he will be damned for all eternity to walk the Earth as an undead monster, the temptation to do so an unforgiving ache on his soul he somehow must find the strength to not give in to.
Dracula Untold is Bram Stoker as seen through a J.R.R. Tolkien lens, this messy, needlessly convoluted origin tale more about the computer-enhanced visuals than it is about telling a coherent, or for that matter necessary, story. It’s hurried and frantic, stopping every so often for melodramatic overtures of eternal love and family devotion, everything building to a preordained conclusion that’s nowhere near as powerful or as affecting as the filmmakers obviously intend. Dracula Untold is as pointless as it is somewhat surprisingly bloodless, the heart beating at the center of this effort as cold and as lifeless as the central ‘hero’ around which everything revolves.
I will say Evans, currently being seen as Bard the Bowman in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as well as this December’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, is nicely cast as the title character. He’s suitably passionate, oozing an entrancing masculinity from the outset I found captivating. He’s nicely paired with Sarah Gadon, recently making indelible impressions in films as diverse as Enemy, Cosmopolis and A Dangerous Method, the two displaying enough chemistry to make even the silliest aspects of their romantic entanglement feel more authentic than they by all accounts should.
The film is also nicely realized from a visual standpoint, director Gary Shore not so much doing anything new (he’s cribbing freely from Peter Jackson’s playbook; that goes without saying) as still putting a nice enough spin on things to keep my interest piqued, even if narratively his film was sadly lacking in most ways that mattered. Veteran cinematographer John Schwartzman (The Rock, Seabiscuit) does a fine job throughout, painting things in muted greys and steely blues, allowing silver specs of light to filter in and out throughout.
But all of this is more or less damning Dracula Untold with faint praise. While nothing is outright terrible, there’s just as noticeably little to anything that’s particularly good either, the whole enterprise so lacking in anything substantive it probably wasn’t there from the start. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless’ script is instantly forgettable, and while there are some decently concocted connections to Stoker’s source material, they’re not near interesting enough to make watching all 92 minutes of this debacle worthwhile. As backstories go, this legendary character deserves a better one than this; best to just put a stake through the film’s heart right now and call it a day.
Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
