Dracula Untold review

Dracula Untold This film tries to reveal how Vlad the impaler, ruler of Transylvania, became the blood thirsty Count Dracula. The result is actually quite disappointing for all those goth & Emo kids dreaming of creepy vampire bloodlust. The film direction moves more toward a fantasy 'Game of Thrones' vibe than to a 'Nosferatu' horror tale. Here Luke Evans, that archer dude from the Hobbit films, plays Vlad more as a loving father & husband and a superhero for his people against the bad bad Turks. The plot has more holes than the cave the original vampire resides. How come Vlad didn't knew anything about that creature's existence living just so close to his castle until he just needed to? The movie starts well, but as soon as Vlad acquires his 'powers' it turns into a ridiculous CGI fest as our fanged superhero unleashes his all mighty justice on the evil Turk armies. Then when he faces his mortal enemy he decides to have a sword fight duel to his disadvantage. Why he just didn't crush him like a roach like he did minutes before to his army? The ending sequence, set on modern day New York I guess, is dumb and cringe worthy. Dracula Untold not only is the most expensive Dracula film ever produce ($100 million), but it was supposed to be the first entry in the Universal Studios planned Classic Monsters Cinematic Universe with Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolfman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon having their own movies and then team up in an 'Avengers-like' monster mash. The fact this film was a commercial and critical disappointment can persuade the Universal suits to quit now on such a stupid idea. Still Dracula Untold is a watchable film (I'm a sucker for this kind of movie...no pun intended), but that does not deserves a sequel. 6/10

 

Well, kiddos, Universal is still going ahead with their Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe plans since Dracula Untold while a box office dud domestically, at the end it made a whooping $215.7 million worldwide!

Read, if you dare, the scary statements by Universal Pictures chairman Donna Langley:

"LANGLEY: We have to mine our resources. We don't have any capes [in our film library]. But what we do have is an incredible legacy and history with the monster characters. We've tried over the years to make monster movies — unsuccessfully, actually. So, we took a good, hard look at it, and we settled upon an idea, which is to take it out of the horror genre, put it more in the action-adventure genre and make it present day, bringing these incredibly rich and complex characters into present day and reimagine them and reintroduce them to a contemporary audience."

Their next entry in
their planned Marvel-like action-monster will be titled (and as ridiculous as it sounds I am not making this up) "Universal's The Mummy: The First Monster"...hmmm...why that sounds like a certain Marvel film title?

 

I have no intentions of seeing this movie, but I bet you a year's salary it's better than Don Jon.

 

Of course is better than 'Don Jon'! I gave this one a 6 and 'Don Jon' a 9! :nana: