Dracula Untold - Movie Review

            

            Now that it seems as if all of the other gimmick ideas have either failed or run in short supply, we now have a Dracula film. The “Untold” story that has in fact been told multiple times before is now on the big screen… again. Luckily, the film has a budget of $100,000,000. Will that save it? As reflected in my rating. I think not.

            Dracula Untold tells the back story of Dracula. We learn how he became the vampire he was and his life before the story of Dracula came into play. He was a prince - an English prince. His father had given him away as a slave to the Turkish, who were ruling over many lands at the time, to show his loyalty. But Dracula was such a fierce warrior that he got away and was able to retake his castle. Now, many years later, he is an adult. The Turkish and Dracula are at some crazy form of peace, but they are soon brought to war, and because Dracula is outnumbered greatly, he must do something that he does not want to do in order to protect his people.

            Dracula is not known as Dracula in the beginning of the film, but as Vlad. Luke Evans is credited as playing Vlad. Dracula becomes his name later on… Luke Evans tries to give a good performance as Vlad/Dracula. He tries… but the director of the movie does not seem to know how to direct actors. All of the performances come off as either over-acting or just simply bad performances. No matter how much they try, no one is good here, and that includes Evans. Sarah Gadon, playing his wife, also tries. And she is not good either. Neither is Dominic Cooper.

            But it’s not only the poor direction of actors that makes Gary Shore pail at directing this film. Every scene feels halfway done. This film is not well made. It seems like every take put into this film was the worst of the bunch. It really felt like people going out and making a movie, and not doing a good job at it. Does the film look good? It looks fine, but it’s not getting any extra credit for that, because the cinematography is not above average. It is… average. No points lost, no points gained.

            One praise I can give the director is that the action sequences are not filmed poorly as I expected them to be, judging from the poor direction of other scenes. There are actually some shots that I felt were very stylistic and added something to the movie. There were times here in which I felt that the director had some vision. However, those times were not in abundance.

            Now it’s time to move on to the poor writing of the film. The near-90-minute run-time of the film is highly reflected in the very small amount of depth, sense, and justification of the film. Things just happen. And the scenes don’t fit together either. One ridiculous dialogue scene happens with Dracula/Vlad and his wife, and then the scene ends in a way that the next scene regarding something having to do with a plot or subplot is set up.

            As for the character development, there are but about two scenes. Of course Vlad/Dracula got the most character development, but I really never felt him to be a fleshed-out character. Even he didn’t have very much, and the rest of the characters had either little or none. His wife is there to be his wife. His son is there to be his son. The villain is there to be his villain. And the villain is to the hero as black is to the white. The hero is good. The villain is bad. The conflict goes no further than that.

            As for the dialogue, it’s not bad… but still not good. There are some scenes with bad dialogue, and no scenes with good dialogue, but the dialogue in most scenes is not ridiculous but not compelling. Most of it is just moving the plot along. But there definitely are clichés in it. This film is filled with clichés. There are clichés having to do with the husband and wife, the father and son, the hero and villain, the hero and the devil, etc. The film is filled up to the rim with clichés that succeed only in making the audience bored. The dialogue in the script is not good. The characters are only plot devices. The story is nothing new and the arrangement of scenes makes no sense. There is a plethora of logical errors and there is little-to-no reasoning behind what happens. The script is simply bad.

            The bad script and poor execution work together to make Dracula Untold a dull and highly forgettable movie. Throughout the first half of the film, I tolerated it. I didn’t like it, I wasn’t entertained by it, but I tolerated it. Throughout the entire second half, I was ready to get out of the theater. I was done with the film and mentally checked out. I didn’t care what happened; I was just ready to get out. I continually checked my watch for the time and tried to figure out about how long it would be before the film was over.

            The studios found that they could make money off of the gimmick of another Dracula movie because they’re sure to get all of the Dracula fans in there as well as other people who may be interested in vampires.

            This gimmick is not worth seeing and definitely not worth spending money on, renting it or seeing it in the theater.