Review of Dracula Untold (2014) by Clarisesamuels — 13 May 2015

This is a new take on the Count Dracula story, and it gives actor Luke Evans in the title role a good opportunity to carry an entire film, playing a strange admixture of good and evil. Unlike most Faustian types who make a pact with the devil because they lust for power, money and knowledge, this would-be Faust is forced to seek out the devil to protect his countrymen and his family, particularly his son. His motives are noble and lofty—he has to keep the evil Turks out of his Romanian province, where he is a prince, actually Vlad the Impaler, so named because he grew up as a hostage of the Ottoman Empire , where he was trained to be a soldier who was famous for killing thousands pitilessly.

After repenting of such a lifestyle, he becomes a loving husband and father, and comes home to reign in his castle as the prince of Wallachia. Finding out that the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper), to whom Vlad pays taxes, has come to town to recruit a thousand young men from Wallachia, including Vlad’s own young son, causes a crisis of faith. Vlad returns to a cave where he knows there is a monstrous presence, a vampire trapped in the shadows, who awaits someone to discover him, then come back to him willingly and agree to trade places with him in exchange for the powers of darkness.

Vlad returns to the cave willingly after he realizes he cannot defeat the Ottoman Empire without help. He makes a deal with the grotesque vampire—he can enjoy the powers of darkness for three days; if he resists drinking blood for that period, he will be restored to himself; if not, his vampirism will become a permanent state, and he will become the vampire trapped in the shadows. Thus begins Vlad’s challenge. He acquires fantastic strength and the ability to turn himself into a swarm of bats, but like all vampires, he is sensitive to sunlight and pure silver. Single-handedly he walks into a small army of Turkish troops and destroys them, much to the shock of his compatriots. His wife begins to notice some suspicious changes, and he confesses to her the pact that he made. Will the new Dracula win the war in three days?

The landscapes are dramatically dark and eerie, and Luke Evans seems to have mastered this persona, having just played a heroic leader and a protective father in the last Hobbit installment. Dialogue is ridden with clichés and character sketches are weak—self-sacrificing wife, evil sultan, horrific demon, handsome child, trusting associates, and robotic enemy armies. It’s all there, the difference being that this Dracula has to control his thirst for blood, which is the only plot line that lends the story some depth and complexity, since the eternal battle of the soul to choose either good or evil will always generate some interest. Evans is classically handsome and athletically fit, and his charisma alone is enough to make the film, in spite of everything, highly watchable.