Rapid Review: Dracula Untold (2014)

“Men don’t fear swords. They fear monsters.”
– Vlad Tepes

SYNOPSIS: At the turn of the century, the young lord Vlad and his family live a peaceful life ruling over their small kingdom, but when a Turk warlord demands from Vlad a thousand boys and his son to create an army. Vlad seeks a terrible power that will allow him to protect his kingdom and family from the Turks at a terrible cost. – via IMDB

My cape fetish went into overdrive…

#ForScience

CGI up the wazoo and all, it worked for this.

I was such a fan of the flight style and look. So fresh and fancy!

To be very honest, I don’t know why this movie was panned so much. Undeniably, the last fifteen minutes were a bit of a wreck, but everything before that was a boat-load of fun, and the way the movie itself wrapped up right by the end was also good. The movie also flaunts some impressive effects. I was totally taken in by the way Vlad was swooping around with bats pulling him forth. Very cool. I thought the costume design was great, too. Luke Evans waltzed around looking like a total badass and he was very well cast. I had a few serious cape fetish moments throughout here, because you all know how I am about them… That and dear goodness, even when he takes off his cape and his armour and his shirt he’s just… yummy. But I swear, that is not why I was watching. In actual fact, I didn’t even know I would get to see Evans strut his stuff. I really enjoyed his portrayal of Vlad. He was strong, he was fair, noble and loyal, he was dangerous, he was so in love with his wife, such a charmer and a tortured individual (bestie, maybe that’s what sold me). I think Dominic Cooper was a bit of a miss here, which breaks my heart seeing as I really enjoy him. He looked like he had a fight with a can of spray tan, and the spray tan won. Plus he had some weird accent going there. He was not scary, and did not look like he could invoke fear or lead armies. Not like Evans. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this. It is certainly not a movie you can take too seriously, and there are plot holes and contrivances, but if you simply take this as a movie of Vlad desperately trying to save his people, then you will not be disappointed. Don’t concentrate on the mythology you know of Dracula. This is just a pretty cool interpretation about the man who he was before the changes. I enjoyed the way that everything looked, it was really awesome and it was shot very nicely. I liked how it was done, even with all the CGI (which I am usually not a fan of in abundance) and even with the few gimmicky specially-for-3D scenes that were in there, they still managed to look alright despite not seeing this in 3D. I really wish I had caught this in cinema. I was glad to see this return more to real vampires types, not these sparkly things we have been subjected to the last few years. I was totally a goner when there were these pretty big battles and castle sieges. I, personally, would have liked them to go on longer and feature more blood, guts, and gore because few things thrill me like a damn fine castle siege, but for what they were, yessssss. My other half saw Vlad march back into Castle Dracula, and the battle started, and his reaction? “Yes, you’re officially on board.” I know that there have been complaints, and they are valid ones at the very least because there is a lot wrong with it, but overall Dracula Untold is a lot of cheesy amusement, and definitely something I will check out again!