DRACULA UNTOLD (2014)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    Gary Shore
Writer:       Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Producer:  Michael De Luca
Stars:     Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper, Sarah Gadon, Art Parkinson, Charles Dance, Diarmaid Murtagh, Ronan Vibert, William Houston, Ferdinand Kingsley, Zach McGowan, Paul Kaye

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Prince Vlad the Impaler makes a pact with a vampire to defend the Transylvanian people against an invading Turkish army.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1442 – The Turkish sultan enslaves 1,000 Transylvanian children to fill the ranks of his army. Vlad the Impaler, also known as “Son of the Dragon,” rises to become the legion’s most feared soldier. Disgusted by his savagery during the war, Vlad returns to Transylvania to rule his people in peace as a prince.

While searching a cave on Broken Tooth Mountain for signs of a Turkish scouting party, Vlad’s men are attacked by a creature. The scribe back at Castle Dracula later recounts the Roman legend of the vampire for Vlad.

Representing the new Turkish sultan Mehmed, Hamza Bey interrupts an Easter celebration at Castle Dracula to inform Vlad that Mehmed demands 1,000 Transylvanian boys for the Turkish army in addition to monetary tribute. Vlad meets personally with Mehmed, but is unsuccessful in negotiating a trade for himself instead of the children. Mehmed additionally demands that Vlad turn over his son Ingeras as well.

With his wife Mirena in distress, Vlad wavers on turning over their son to avoid a war. However, Vlad ultimately slaughters Hamza Bey and the rest of the escort that comes to take Ingeras.

Knowing that he is outmatched for a war against Mehmed, Vlad returns to Broken Tooth Mountain and bargains for the power of the Master Vampire. The Master Vampire has Vlad drink his blood to gain vampiric abilities and power. If Vlad can resist the urge to feed on human blood for three days, he will return to human form. If he does feed, Vlad is to become a monster while the Master Vampire will be freed from his mystical bindings to the cave for having offered the darkness a new vessel.

Vlad wakes in a river with the strengths and weaknesses of a vampire and returns to Castle Dracula while the Turks lay siege. Vlad singlehandedly defeats the entire siege battalion in hand-to-hand combat before leading his people into hiding at a monastery. Upon receiving word of his soldiers’ defeat, Mehmed decides to personally lead an increased assault on Vlad and the Transylvanians.

Vlad admits what he did on the mountain to Mirena. Brother Lucian also uncovers that Vlad is a vampire, leading to a revolt of Vlad’s people in which they burn his quarters. Vlad heals from the flames and chastises the Transylvanians for betraying him, but reaffirms his vow to protect them.

With Mehmed’s army approaching, Vlad commands swarms of bats to tear through the Turkish legions, although enough soldiers break through the defenses to begin a slaughter of Vlad’s people. Mirena falls from a tower during the battle. As she lies dying, Mirena implores her husband to drink her blood so that he can fully turn into a vampire and defeat the Turks. Vlad does so.

Vlad dons his battle armor and bites the dying Transylvanians to create a vampire army. With swarms of bats in tow, Vlad’s vampire pack descends upon the campsite of Mehmed’s army. Vlad destroys Mehmed in combat and announces that he is now Dracula, “Son of the Devil.”

After the Turks’ defeat, the Transylvanian vampires express a desire to kill Ingeras because he is human. Dracula turns over his son to Brother Lucian for safe passage while Dracula uses his powers to part the clouds and destroy all of the vampires with sunlight, including himself. While Ingeras goes on to become the new ruler of Transylvania, a human servant uses his blood to resurrect Dracula.

In the 21st-century, Dracula meets a Mirena lookalike on the street. Now freed and reformed, the Master Vampire observes Dracula from a distance and follows the couple as they walk away together.

---

Review:

The triple digit number of years that Dracula has haunted horror fiction is surpassed in sum total only by the number of movies starring the infamous Transylvanian vampire.  At this point, there isn’t anything left in Vlad Tepes’ tale that is genuinely “untold.”  The closest anything comes is the story of how Dracula first became a creature of the night, which, as “Dracula Untold” shows us, turns out to be an eyelid-drooping origin featuring Vlad the Impaler having a seven-minute discussion with the monster who turns him.

Look up “Dracula Untold” on IMDB and you’ll see its genre classified as Action, Drama, and Fantasy.  Notice that Horror is not included.  That’s because instead of the gothic playboy or neck-biting villain audiences are familiar and fascinated with, “Dracula Untold” casts the count as a swordfighting head of state hero in a chatty movie burdened by “Game of Thrones” political machinations and “Lord of the Rings” steel clanging.

When Turkish sultan Mehmed unreasonably demands the donation of 1,001 Transylvanian boys for his army, the extra one being Vlad’s son Ingeras, Castle Dracula prepares for war against the neighboring nation.  Outmanned and underequipped, Vlad’s desperate recourse to turn the battle’s tide involves a journey to Broken Tooth Mountain where he makes a deal with a cave-dwelling creature to acquire the strengths, and weaknesses, of a bloodsucking vampire.  Shunned by his own God-fearing people, Vlad is nonetheless determined to protect his family and his kingdom no matter the cost, even though it means becoming “Son of the Devil” in the process.

Arcing his transformation at a leisurely pace, “Dracula Untold” takes its time, thirty minutes to be exact, before Prince Vlad makes his pact and drinks the blood of the Master Vampire.  From there, Vlad contentedly continues using his sword and his skill to combat Mehmed’s legions, summoning the occasional CGI bat swarm as an impromptu army when things grow particularly hairy, until finally baring fangs to puncture human skin five minutes past the one-hour mark.  With a credits-less runtime of only 85 minutes, that leaves just 20 minutes remaining for Dracula to appear onscreen in the incarnation audiences expect, and likely desire.

“Dracula Untold” is predictably produced as a period piece forcing grandeur and epic sensations through wind-rippled capes and hands outstretching in slow motion while an operatic voice echoes.  It is mild and milquetoast melodrama competently made, but misdirected at a market unlikely to take to a Universal Monsters cornerstone rewritten as a cross between Jon Snow and Frodo Baggins without much personality.

With countless filmic adaptations already to Dracula’s name, doing something out of the ordinary to rejuvenate a character whose tales have been told across several centuries is not a misguided idea.  Although while an atypical approach may be justified, it is difficult to imagine the Powers That Be writing/reading a script featuring this many scenes of poetic soliloquies, wordy romantic musings, and seemingly endless conversations with secondary characters too unimportant to remember their names, and nodding in agreement that a Dracula favoring sword over fangs is something to be excited about.  Even in the paper stage, it should have been plain to see the blueprint for disappointment being architected in the approach.

Overburdened by standing still dialogue from a screenplay with the flavor of room temperature tap water, “Dracula Untold” is only poorly conceived, not poorly made.  Similar to Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” (review here), which is a terrific gargantuan monster epic but a terrible Godzilla movie, “Dracula Untold” can be appreciated for what it is while reviled for what it is not.  Which is a mediocre fantasy-action-drama doubling as a Dracula movie in title only.

Review Score:  55

---