** 2/5 STARS
Painfully. Average. These are the two words that sum up my experience of Dracula Untold, this year’s obligatory vampire flick depicting the story of Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a the original Dracula.
As the title would suggest, the film attempts to put a new twist on the legendary horror figure as we are introduced to Prince Vlad, played by Luke Evans, a noble yet flawed hero that has put his past of war, violence and well… impaling behind him and rules peacefully over his kingdom in Transylvania. This life is disrupted however when Turkish Sultan Mehmet (played by Dominic Cooper) demands 1000 boys including Vlad’s son to join his army under a cruel rule that he thought he had escaped forever. To defeat his enemies and save his people Vlad is forced to seek dark, vampy powers from a feared monster… but at a terrible price.
While this premise sounds undoubtedly tempting and has all the attractions a light Halloween flick has to offer (e.g- Vampires, handsome hero, romance etc.) the whole film is, for the most part, disappointing. While the plot isn’t bad, it is desperately predicable and lacked tension, with Vlad’s temptation for blood being flimsy at best. The character seemed to look at blood the way a person would look at dessert after a meal – tempting but avoided with a little willpower and a glance at the calorie content. Not the desperate all-consuming need that you would expect. The characters also could come across as a little clichéd with Vlad being the dark handsome hero with a tragic past that we have come to expect from vampire films (damn you Edward Cullen) and his wife Miren the delicate beautiful female at his side. Apart from the main role the other characters tended to feel underdeveloped and played a purely functional role.
However, the actors performed their roles well as far as the characters would allow and in the scenes where Vlad is infected by the Master Vampire (played by Charles Dance a.k.a Tywin Lanister GoT fans) were genuinely creepy and his acting is brilliant. Although, the character is only in the film for about 15 minutes in total, which is a shame, and leaves some unanswered questions which the directors clearly intend to answer in a sequel. A sequel that I doubt will ever come to pass.
So, if you’re looking for a film that is fun and doesn’t require too much concentration – basically a date film to canoodle in the back row to – this is the one for you. However, if you’re looking for a film with a bit more grit and substance, maybe not. Not bad, but not great this is a lukewarm attempt at something that could have been better.
Edited by Mackenzie Orrock