Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans) is a Prince of Transylvania after years of torture and forced soldiering in the service of the Turkish Empire.  He is celebrating Easter with his people when Turk envoys unexpectedly arrive and request 1000 children to be trained for the Turkish Empire including Vlad’s son.  He soon refuses the demands of the Turks and decides to make a bargain with the devil (a vampire who has Vlad drink his blood).  Vlad has super abilities for three days, but he must resist the urge to drink blood or he will become one of the undead.  He wages a one man supernatural war on the incoming Turkish army who wants to break Vlad’s will again as Vlad remembers the monster he was once in the service of the Turks (where he was known as Vlad the Impaler).

 

DRACULA UNTOLD isn’t a bad movie, but it isn’t a great reinvention of the Dracula myth where Luke Evans is the only really great thing (besides Charles Dance’s few scenes as the Master Vampire) besides the production design.  The rest of it is a script full of clichés which works well enough and there isn’t really much depth to this tale where they could have made this a sweeping historical element where a hero is cursed to be a monster, but DRACULA UNTOLD only gets halfway there.  This movie is good to watch once, but it may be better suited as a rental that doesn’t suck and yet lacks bite of the Dracula movies it is trying to reinvent with a prequel story.  If they do make the sequel (which looks more likely due to the great international box office), I hope they can tell the tale of a weary vampire leaving centuries while struggling with his inner desire for blood.

 

This review is ©10-19-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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