Brooks Hamlin
Staff Writer
When Dracula comes to mind most think of bats, blood, and a tall debonair cloaked figure who only comes out at night.
In “Dracula Untold”, directed by Gary Shore, there is little to no blood, unrealistic bats, and instead of a classic dracula, a brute/savage who murders thousands, providing a dull film with uninspiring acting and a predictable plot.
Vlad (Luke Evans) rules his kingdom of Transylvania peacefully with his son and wife. To his surprise, the Turks (an army he once fought for) return to his land seeking not only tribute but 1000 children to fight in the sultan’s (Dominic Cooper) army. Vlad finds help from his trusty vampire (Charles Dance) and gains its power for only 3 days on the condition that he must not drink human blood. With a three day deadline he must defend his kingdom and his family by killing his enemy.
The beginning of the movie is thrilling, it is fast paced and gets off to a quick start, however as the movie progresses it develops the cliché plotline of every stereotypical action film in Hollywood. The main character develops a problem, he gains some sort of power, tries to deal with his problem, someone exploits his weakness. Almost all of the scenes were predictable and ended up making the film dull.
The movie lacked enough focus on vampires themselves and expected the audience to know all of their weaknesses and powers from the start. Vampires should have been the main plot and theme of the story, but instead the story just focused extensively on Vlad’s past and on the fight scenes.
The characters’ lack of development extremely hinders the film’s success. Besides Vlad, almost no characters had a single backstory, which forced an unwanted focus on Vlad for the entire movie. More than half of the characters were never even called by their name, making it extremely difficult to follow who each character was. Dance did an exceptional job at being scary and causing a lot of suspense. However, he only had a screen time of around five minutes ,making it hard to follow him and didn’t give the film enough time to expand on his character.
The special effects are what carried the film, especially when Vlad was using all of his powers and took control of swarms of bats while he decimated the turks. Special effects were a huge focus in the movie and were extremely realistic, which made it very suspenseful and each scene was very appealing.
Many components of the film were confusing, making it hard to follow and dull. Viewers were made to overanalyze the plot rather than watching the movie and some of the scenes did not fit together, which upset the overall flow of the film.
“Dracula Untold” uses special effects to distract the audience from the sub-par acting and terrible plot. While the fight scenes and action were intense, characters were poorly developed and were not entertaining to watch, eventually creating a mediocre film.
“Dracula Untold” is rated PG-13 and now playing in theaters nationwide.
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