Cinemavenger

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Dracula Untold

Bram Stoker's OG neck biter gets the Dark Knight treatment in Dracula Untold, and the resulting movie sucks harder than a famished Vlad himself after a two-century batnap.

Despite it making less sense than a helmet on a kamikaze pilot, Hollywood has anointed Luke Evans a star.  Fresh off forgettable performances in Fast & Furious 6 and the middle film in the are-you-fucking-kidding-me-they-turned-The Hobbit-into-a-trilolgy?! trilogy, Evans plays Vlad Tepes aka Vlad the Impaler aka Count Dracula (minus the Count), and he does so with all the charisma of a coffin worm.

First time director Gary Shore and the money men behind him obviously thought that by mashing up Game of Thrones-esque production design with a retread of 300's storyline, they could sit back and watch the ducats roll in.  Given that there were more people at my neighbor's "Octogenarians Only" orgy this weekend than there were in the theater when I saw this Transylvanian turd, I'm guessing they miscalculated just a skosh.

Their first Andre the Giant-sized mistake was to try to tell a Dracula origin story with a PG-13 rating.  The bullshit, sparkly-skinned, abstinence-loving puss-pires of Twilight notwithstanding, vampires in general - and Dracula in particular - are all about blood and sex.  What are the two things completely verboten in a PG-13 movie?  Anything more than a drop or two of blood and even the tiniest bit of nudity.  Really thought that one through, didn't ya?  Fuckwits.

But then again, Dracula Untold's creative team dropped the ball more often than a hands-less wide receiver, so should I really be surprised by the countless ways they fucked up one of the most well-known, easy peasy, practically-tells-itself stories of the past 117 years?

I mean, they thought they could get away with having Turkish monarch, Mehmed (Dominic Cooper - because apparently all you need to play a Turk is heavy eyeliner), solve the problem of his troops being scared by all of Dracula's supernatural chicanery by blindfolding them before marching them into battle.  General MacArthur he ain't.

They thought no one would notice that even though Vlad-ula can turn into a cloud of bats and move with super speed, when his wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon) is plummeting toward certain doom he can suddenly only manage to fly just shy of her terminal velocity.  And then, after she splats from 1000 feet up, she's somehow not messily and utterly dead but actually remains lucidly conscious long enough to share some pivotal final moments with her immortal beloved.  And there's not a drop of blood on her or anywhere in sight.  Fucking PG-13.

Soon after, during a climactic sword fight (which fits about as well as a climactic bake-off at the end of a Dracula movie), the Prince of Fartness is getting the shit kicked out of him by a mere mortal.  He's battered and beaten and inches away from taking a stake to the heart when he suddenly remembers, "Oh, yeah!  I can turn into a cloud of bats!  Eureka!"  What the guano-covered fuck?!

Universal Studios has Marvel envy.  They want to resurrect their "classic monsters" line and give it an Avengers makeover.  Dracula Untold is the first step down a path meant to force puketastic new versions of the Mummy, Wolf Man, Frankenstein and who knows how many other third-tier Invisible Men and Creatures from African American Lagoons down our throats.  

That's scarier than anything in Dracula Untold.  

Drac is wack,  yo.

October 12, 2014