Monster Madness
The Hype
Dracula Untold is not a movie I was looking forward to. There are certain key words that are so played out that when I hear them i almost immediately check out, Vampires are one of those hot buttons, especially when it's the most famous flagship vampire Dracula. It really just looked like a gimmicky action film, a discount Underworld or a lazy attempt at a franchise. The whole bat thing from the trailers looked silly to me, i'v heard no positive things, and none of the actors got me exited either. Walking to the the theater (with one other person in it) i rolled my eyes and thought to myself, lets get this over with.
The Review
I'm just gonna start by saying Dracula: Untold is not a bad movie. After the opening voice over that now feels mandatory for movies like this I was shocked by what I saw, This movie actually feels original. This may not be a huge compliment, but any film that makes anything even somewhat original out of a concept that has been played to death (Vampires) deserves a lot of credit. One of the first things you'll notice are the set pieces and most of all the costumes, most are great and some are outstanding. Dracula takes place hundreds of years ago, and the movie portrays that well, the dedication to the period isn't anything amazing, but the effort is there.
The acting was also surprisingly good, there are no performances to write home about, but there's no bad acting and everyone fits in. It would be amiss for me to say this movie accomplishes the bare minimum, but I can say that most aspects it reaches the truly important goal. You sympathize with the protagonist, and you really hate the bad guys, Every time I say something positive about this movie I have the strong urge to insert "actually" and "surprisingly" before, this is due to my extremely low expectations. So because I was expecting an absolute crap fest, it may have actually enhanced my enjoyment of the movie. The story was solid and I was consistently entertained.
Dracula: Untold was made to cash in at the bank of superhero franchises, and it follows the formula pretty well. Dracula knows what kind of movie it is and never tries to do too much, no unnecessary plots or scenes and they show us just enough to understand whats going on and we're right back to the action, sometimes you want to see a long character driven movie like the judge but other times you just want 90 minutes of badassery and that is the space the Dracula occupies.
When someone becomes a monster, werewolf, Frankenstein, Etc it is usually meant to be a dark and/or scary scene, but when our main character becomes a vampire it is more reminiscent of spider-man discovering his powers, Dracula tries so hard to be a superhero film that it almost forgets its still a monster movie, so in the third act we get the obligatory torch and pitch -fork scene that feels forced and completely out of place. There are some eye rolling moments like this bad nothing bad enough to ruin the movie.
[Spoiler Alert!]
Finally the ending... it wasn't bad, but it was almost unbearable cheesy due to the fact that it felt like it was copied and pasted from a Marvel Studios film, the done-to-death fake out death scene, and the Steve Rodger style waking up in present day. to take it even further the original vampire shows up in the background acting as the Nick Fury of the monster universe. I'm assuming this is the added in scene to connect it the Universal Monster Avengers.
[End Spoiler Alert!]
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Dracula: Untold is a movie with a lot of problems and downfalls, and if you sit and watch critically you will defiantly catch on, and it might be too much for you to overcome, but if you take Dracula for what it is, and turn off your brain, you'll see an incredibly bad ass character, a cool and consistent tone and some outstanding action sequences that are sure to get your blood pumping.
The Verdict
I cant say its a great movie, but the only important part is I had a great time watching it.
7.8/10