Dracula Untold (2014)

* ½ out of ****

While I was watching “Dracula Untold” it suddenly occurred to me that there has never been a really good movie about the character “Dracula”. Ever since Hollywood has been making movies they have been trying to cash in on the most legendary vampire of them all, and cash in they have. What they have failed to do, despite dozens of tries, is make a film about him that is actually entertaining. I suppose the version "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) was the best attempt (as it was truest to the source material) but it came out deadly boring and not scary at all.   “Dracula Untold” is the latest in that not-so-grand tradition.

Did you ever wonder how Dracula became a vampire? Neither did I, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be interesting. In fact, upon viewing the trailers this movie looked like it had some potential. Vlad the Impaler, a prince of Romania, strikes a deal with an ancient and imprisoned vampire in order to save his people from the tyranny of the Turks. The deal is that he will have vampiric powers for three days, a time during which he can wipe out the invaders, and if he can resist the temptation to drink human blood he will return to humanity as he had been before. But if he could not resist and consumed blood, he would become a vampire for eternity and his creator would be freed.

Ultimately, the tortured Vlad succumbs to temptation at the last second, after his grand experiment ends in almost total failure.  This frees his creator (played, in the lone "kind-of scary" role in the film, by Charles Dance) to come out and terrorize the world.  Luke Evans is actually pretty good in the role of Dracula, but there just isn't much good stuff for him to do.

While Dracula hasn't always be completely villainous, this is the first attempt that I recall of making him heroic. And the theme isn't bad, but the script is just terribly weak. The visual effects are actually really good, and I had no qualms with the CGI, but the dialogue is awful and the plotline is full of holes. But more damning is the way certain aspects of the plot are treated. For instance, Draclu is weakened by silver, and in a key scene this is used against him in a fashion that leaves all credibility behind. The rescue of Vlad's son at the end is equally silly, as well as pretty much everything in the final 15 minutes.

I think the concept behind the movie was interesting, but the script, battles and overall treatment were all an attempt to make a movie that the tweens/teen would find “cool” rather than to offer a real treatment to the subject matter. Ultimately a big disappointment.