Dracula Untold Review

Dracula Untold
Transylvania, 1462. Prince Vlad (Luke Evans) seeks superhuman powers to battle Turkish invaders, and becomes the vampire Dracula. He rallies his people, but Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper) targets his family.

by Kim Newman |
Published on
Release Date:

03 Oct 2014

Running Time:

92 minutes

Certificate:

15

Original Title:

Dracula Untold

Anakin the Impaler transforms into Darth Dracula in this achingly rote origin story. Like other baddies who’ve had origin movies lately, this Dracula is a misunderstood solid citizen with an understandable grudge – he drinks Charles Dance’s vampire blood so he can turn into a swarm of bats and see off the wicked Turks who want to enslave his son.

Coming off No One Lives, where he was scary and stylish, Luke Evans ought to be great casting as Dracula but this medieval muddle lets him down. If Dracula really started like this, no-one would have bothered to tell any other stories about him.

Armour-clanging, cloak-swishing tosh with okay battles, terrible dialogue and sadly little horror or heroism. Nowhere near as bad as I, Frankenstein – but what is?
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