By Alex Sampson, staff writer
Dracula: Untold is the most recent movie to be made from the cash cow legend of vampires, and let me be the first to tell you, it should have stayed untold.
This movie highlights how Dracula first became Dracula. In order to save his “Kingdom” from the dang Turks, Old Vladdy boy (Luke Evans) makes a deal with some cave dwelling monster (Charles Dance) to become a vampire.
I wouldn’t say it was a huge disappointment because I was not expecting much from it, but I still went in expecting to see a movie worth my money. It made me want a refund. This film is littered with inaccuracy, silly coincidences, and not very talented actors.
Right away it kicks off with the accents of the characters. The main character is based off the legend Vlad the Impaler, the famous Romanian prince, who for whatever reason has an Englishman’s accent. In fact, all of the Romanian people have English accents. Meanwhile, the Turkish people are the ones with the Romanian accents, and to me that’s a big bag of confusing.
Another thing that just isn’t right are Dracula’s weaknesses. The writers keep the basic stuff like sun- light and a wooden stake through the heart but then they just throw in a weakness to silver. Silver is a weakness more commonly known with werewolves and not vampires. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal to brush off if it isn’t such a huge factor in the conclusion of the movie.
Can you spell coincidence? This movie sure can. There are too many things that happen simultaneously just to keep the movie’s story going. For example, when Dracula needs to bring the fight to the Turks, he can all of the sudden control the weather to make it not sunny out. If he could do that 10 minutes earlier in the movie, it would be over, but no they needed to make it more dramatic and lengthier.
You get as much as you can from the C-list actors, which isn’t much. Vlad’s wife (Sarah Gadon) shows little emotion at best towards her family. Ingeras (Art Parkinson), who is Vlad’s son, screams like a cat being tortured every time he wants to express fear. Not that it is too suprising, given that there are not many movies where good child acting can be found. Everyone else in the movie overacts their ridiculous roles with their silly English accents.
Basically the only redeeming quality to this movie is its action. The fight scenes are shot well and for the most part you can tell what’s going on. I did enjoy watching those parts, but there was only two or three of them and those only lasted five minutes tops.
In total there is more bad in this movie than good, which equals a movie that sucks (Ha, no pun intended). Nine thumbs down.