Movie Review: Dracula Untold (2014) - I'll tell you one thing, it could've been told better.

(I am, Dracula, and I have come to warn you of SPOILERS. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I did three noteworthy things today. I got a new watch, I bought an awesome Guardians of the Galaxy T-shirt, and I saw Dracula untold. The T-shirt was my favorite part for the record, followed by the watch. Now that isn’t to say the movie is horrible, it just might not be very memorable. Why? Well, let’s get to it shall we?

Plot Summary:

After an opening montage recalling the history behind the legend of Dracula, our story picks up in the middle ages as Vlad III Tepes (That’s how it’s spelled I swear, also played by Luke Evans) finds the damaged helmet of a Turkish scout and seeks to find the rest of the groups resting place for the night. In a cave on a mountain, Vlad discovers a monster that kills two of his men, but he manages to escape from. After consulting a monk, he learns the creature in the cave was indeed a vampire, and he tells the monk to keep the secret of its existence. The next day, a representative of the Turkish Sultan comes and requests a tribute of 1000 boys including Vlad’s own son. Initially planning to hand him over, he instead kills the group of soldiers sent to claim the boy, and the Turks declare war. Seeking to protect his kingdom and his family, he seeks out the vampire who makes him a deal: He will give him his powers for three days, if he can resist the urge to drink blood in that time, he will return to his mortal form but lose the powers. If he gives in, he will stay a vampire for eternity, and the vampire who gave him the powers will be free to leave his cave. I’ll save you the rest of the story but there’s the basic setup for you.

Pros – The film actually does look pretty good for the time period setting, and there a couple of good action scenes in here as well (including one where he isn’t even a vampire yet.) Luke Evans also does pretty well in the role of Dracula.

Cons – For every good battle in the film, there’s one or two that are kind of dumb, including one where he controls an army of bats to take on a Turkish army of 100,000 soldiers. I know it sounds cool but it strangely isn’t. There are also one or two really stupid moments, and at least two cliché moments in their as well. You can also see the ending coming from a mile away, although the final showdown with the Sultan and Vlad is admittedly kind of cool, albeit it doesn’t use its full potential. Also part of the ending kind of doesn’t make sense as you can tell they added that in last for the new universal monster movie universe (which I more info on further down the page.)

Final Verdict – 5/10

It’s a lot better than I thought it was going to be, but it still doesn’t rise any higher than average. For every cool moment, there’s at least one or two bad or stupid ones to counter act it, but to me it still manages to balance out to just average.

Bonus Info: I said in a previous post about how they are going to use this film to establish the new Universal monster movie universe. Well, I actually just found out right before writing this that that might change. According to badassdigest.com, the new Mummy reboot was to be the first film in the universe and Dracula Untold was to be the second one. Producer Alissa Phillips hoped that Evans character would make a cameo in the film, but according to director Gary Shore in an interview with IGN, "It's optional for them if they want to use it as that launching pad."

So basically this may or may not actually be part of the new universe. Personally (and some people might disagree) I kind of hope they do a different Dracula film for it. As much as this movie wasn’t a flat out stinker, I’m kind of hoping they do a more traditional Dracula in the sense of what he can or cannot do as a vampire. Luke Evans wasn’t awful, but some of the aspects of this Dracula aren’t 100% solid in my mind.

So there we go folks, an average film that may or may not get replaced with something better down the line. Huh, so I guess watching this might have been a complete waste of time. Ah well, least I got my Guardians shirt.

Also, coming up next is our 25^th post special, which is something I’ve been working on for the past week, and I’m really excited to share with you folks.

So until next time, I’ll see you guys at the movies.