I thought the preview looked terrible so I was not looking forward to the newest interpretation of the Dracula legend.  Thankfully, the film is better than its preview suggests.  It still isn’t what I would judge as “good,” but it is certainly watchable and has moments of effectiveness, although it is ultimately misguided.

It’s really a character study of Transylvania’s Prince Vlad (Luke Evans), who has put his impaling past behind him and is living peacefully with his wife (Sarah Gadon) and son (Art Parkinson).  But the Turks, led by Mehmet (Dominic Cooper) want, again, to conscript one thousand boys for their army, so Vlad feels compelled to resist.  Vlad knows only one way to gain enough power to defeat them on his own, so he makes a deal with the devil for dark powers.  He has no wish to live as a vampire but fate is not about to let him off the hook.

Gary Shore’s film is suitably muted in dark tones, cinematically and thematically, as Vlad gambles his life to save his people.  There’s a really well done scene when his own people turn against him, but a few moments later nothing really changes.  It’s a violent tale, involving the deaths of thousands of people, but the PG-13 rated action is not particularly bloody or grisly.  The mythic vampire touchstones are more or less present, with silver being used quite effectively, especially in the final confrontation between Vlad and Mehmet.

But its faults are hard to ignore.  Vlad the family man is tough to believe, after the prologue which describes how he impaled thousands of people on the battlefield.  He can become a true bat-man and fly with incredible speed, but when a key figure is falling to death he cannot rescue that person (shades of Superman: The Movie when Superman cannot outrace rockets, but then flies around the Earth so fast that he can turn back time).  None of the supporting characters are memorable at all, including Mehmet, so this really is a one-man show.

I appreciate that the Dracula is being retold from the very beginning, establishing its new mythos (although Turks should have been Ottomans at that time), and that it is setting up a modern-day sequel.  I appreciate that it is as character-driven as can be, always a good motif for an action movie.  I like Luke Evans as Dracula.  But where is the horror?  This tale is turning the terrifying legend of a vampire into a sympathetic revenge story.  Do we really need Dracula as a heroic figure?  I prefer Bela Lugosi’s take on the character.  ☆ ☆.  21 October 2014.