By Nik Rasmussen– This time you might not want to turn off the lights or reach your hand somewhere without looking first. I’ve got some creepy crawls for you now. IT’S MOVIE TIME!!!
There have been a lot of remakes over the last 15 years and there have been a lot of vampire stories ranging from good to sparkly.
The most recent addition to this list is this year’s “Dracula Untold”. Before going any farther, let me make this perfectly clear. Dracula Untold is reinvisioning and not a remake.
Dracula Untold is the origin story of how Dracula became the monster of the night. In childhood, Vlad was given up by his father to be raised as a soldier under the guidance of the Turkish Emperor. Among the thousands of rising children soldiers, Vlad stood out as the most bloodthirsty, earning the name Vlad the Impaler.
Ten years after Vlad’s days of being known as the Impaler, he is the ruler of Transylvania, happily married with a son. This time of peace ends when a group of Turkish soldiers barge into the royal hall with a message from the new Turkish emperor. He orders that 1,000 boys, including Vlad’s son, are to be given over to the Emperor for his army to serve in the upcoming war.
Vlad’s people beg Vlad to negotiate for the lives of the boys. Negotiations fail, and on the day the Turkish soldiers come to take the boys, Vlad dooms his people for saving the boys and slaughtering the group of Turks. Soon the emperor brings his army to Transylvania to destroy Vlad’s people. There is hope in Vlad’s eyes, for a long rumored monster that roamed the dark mountain also hated Turks. Vlad goes to the mountain alone and strikes a deal with the vampire.
When I saw this film at the Riviera Theater for $3.50, I was surprised at how there was very little gore throughout the movie. This was the story of a good man with a dark past who falls into even deeper darkness. All you Dracula fans will be happy to know that this film fits with the Bram Stoker novel. There are also a lot of cool surprises in the film that spice things up compared the films that have been coming out of Hollywood with what I like to call “the cookie cutter story.”
Dracula Untold hit theaters in the U.S. October 10. This story falls under the action, drama, fantasy categories although it’s surprisingly not a horror film. It stars Luke Evans as Dracula. You might recognize him from the recent film The Hobbit: Desolation of Smog and Immortals. It also stars Charles Dance from “Alien 3″ and “Game of Thrones.”
Directed by Gary Shore and is written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Dracula Untold has a running time of ninety-two minutes. Unfortunately, the film had a budget for seventy million, but only earned back a gross of $55,942,830.
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