Dracula Untold ** (2014, Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon, Charles Dance, Paul Kaye) – Movie Review

Director Gary Shore’s Dracula movie Dracula Untold (2014) is a mundane and uninspired attempt to revive the threadbare formula, with a manly, workmanlike turn by Luke Evans as an action superhero type Vlad Tepes the Impaler and a moderate production with poor CGI – lots of it, lots too much of it. The game plan is, when inspiration or logic flags, send in flocks of unconvincing-looking CGI bats, time and time again.

Charles Dance is the best and classiest thing about the whole movie in his couple of crackling scenes with Evans as the bloodsucking monster Master Vampire, who turns the young lord Vlad into a vampire. Dominic Cooper is the worst and least classy thing about the whole movie as the Turkish warlord chief Mehmed, who demands from Vlad 1,000 boys and his son to create an army, sparking Vald’s need to become Dracula to fight back. Paul Kaye is OK as Vlad’s religious and vampire adviser Brother Lucian. Sarah Gadon looks suitably decorative as Vlad’s wife Mirena. Art Parkinson plays their son Ingeras.

There are basically reasons why stories are Untold, the main one being they’re not really worth telling. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are the guys seeing what they can do with Bram Stoker’s beloved characters, or rather what they can get away with. Well, at least they’ve tried.

The movie’s not exactly bad. It is slick and seamless, with an expensive ($70,000,000), good-looking production, and moves swiftly and painlessly along for its suspiciously short 92 minutes length. Cinematography by John Schwartzman, production design by François Audouy and costume design by Ngila Dickson are all first rate. The score by Ramin Djawadi is okay too. But it is recommended only as a midnight movie to be sampled after several beers and slices of pizza.

Shore studied film in his native Ireland and fine art at Central Saint Martins in London and had a career as a commercials director before debuting as a film director with Dracula Untold. His inexperience shows, unfortunately.

Nothing here comes near to beating anything in the old Dracula classics, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in 1931, the Hammer Films Dracula 1958 and Bram Stoker’s Dracula 1992.

Unexpectedly, it was filmed in Northern Ireland, UK.

It US gross of $56,280,355 disappointed but it went on to gross $217,124,280 worldwide.

By 2021, Dracula Untold remains Shore’s only feature.

It looks like Universal Pictures were dithering. Dracula Untold was intended to be the start of a reboot of their Monsters Universe but they later announced that it would not be part of the series, which led to the 2017 The Mummy as the first instalment in the Monsters Universe, or Dark Universe, but series plans were cancelled after The Mummy was a critical and commercial failure.

http://derekwinnert.com/dracula-1931-classic-film-review-88/

http://derekwinnert.com/dracula-1958-classic-film-review-90/

http://derekwinnert.com/bram-stokers-dracula-classic-film-review-244/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/