My Review of "Bram Stoker's Dracula"

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a visual marvel even to today's standards. There's a lot that they did in this movie that you just don't see in movies nowadays. The attention to detail and general art direction is fantastic. Still that shouldn't be the sole reason why you go watch this movie. You should go see it because you genuinely love vampire movies. It's got this old school feel that not everyone will appreciate.

This movie starts off with Dracula at a young age. He's this warrior in some religious war. He's goes off to battle in this unwinnable war and surprisingly comes out victorious. The problem is that news came to his wife that he had died in the war and she dramatically takes her own life because of this. Seeing as it is religiously forbidden for people to commit suicide no matter the reason, Dracula's wife is said to be going to hell.

Dracula discovers the whole situation with his wife and goes absolutely crazy and starts destroying things left and right and one of the things he does is shoves his sword into a cross that starts bleeding. He forsakes his religion because he won the war for the religion only to lose his wife. He then starts drinking the blood of the cross.

The movie then goes to a new character hundreds of years later in the late 1800s. We cut to this young naïve kid named Jonathan. He's an up and coming barrister. A previous barrister before him had gone to a mental asylum and basically Jonathan is taking the old barrister's files. The latest file is this guy trying to buy a whole bunch of property in London named Dracula.

In order to get the deal he has to go all the way to Transylvania to broker the deal and win Dracula's trust. Jonathan being so obtuse and green agrees to go and leaves the love of his life Mina in London with her friend Lucy. Little does he know that this is all a clever ruse by Dracula.

You see Jonathan's love Mina looks exactly like Dracula's wife that had committed suicide hundreds of years ago. It quickly becomes apparent that Dracula is trying to get rid of Jonathan so that he can make Mina his new bride.

I honestly don't know how vampire movies can stay so popular in this day in age. We all talk about the privilege of white heterosexual males and Dracula is the epitome of the privilege and worse. Dracula has the ability to make people fall in love with him no matter who they are. Watching through this movie I realized how wrong this whole story was and they were continually trying to give us empathy for Dracula throughout the movie. In that sense I had a pretty bad taste in my mouth watching this movie. I understand what they're trying to get at though.

Then the movie started to feel more like a beauty and the beast movie. Even today a lot of woke movie goers have issues with the concept of the beauty and the beast series. Dracula is very much the beast and Mina is beauty. We even see some sort of Stockholm syndrome thing that Mina has for Dracula but you start to wonder if it's actually real feelings or manipulation by Dracula. You can't ever really tell.

From an art piece you really appreciate all the work they did in terms of the art direction and even the fine details of the way the film was shot. There's so many things that kind of lead your eyes to where the director wants you to see and this was before CGI so a lot of the practical effects are even more impressive today.

As a side note, I also have to wonder since this movie came out after Star Wars how much of Dracula was based on the evil character Palpatine. I can see so many similarities in terms of the mannerisms, the makeup and the laughter. It was a little distracting when I saw it because the similarities were so blaring.

Still I was able to enjoy this movie although it was a little long for me. I've never been a fan of vampire movies but I can appreciate this movie for the art factor and the use of a different story than we're all used to.

Overall, if anything you should watch this movie if you're a fan of vampire movies or a fan of film. The visuals and the lore might suck you in but it didn't totally suck me in. I had fun with this movie but I have to give it a 6.5 out of 10. There are a lot of redeeming qualities but ultimately I found the movie a little on the boring side.