Long before "Twilight," "Let the Right One In," "What We Do In The Shadows," and countless other vampire stories, there was the 1897 novel, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and it only took almost 100 years for it to become the latest movie I watched for the Keanu Reeves Project.
Given that I'd never seen this movie and all I really knew about it going in was that Keanu Reeves is supposed to give a horrendous performance, I had little to no expectations and boy was I not disappointed.
We as a society went through a prolonged vampire craze in the mid to late 00's which really, never ended but certainly hit a peak somewhere between five to seven years ago. There were tons of vampire movies during this period: the Twilight Saga," The Underworld series," Dark Shadows," "30 Days of Night," "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," and so, so many more. There were enough of these films that even an incredibly shitty vampire spoof movie, "Vampires Suck," was released in 2010 and while I've never seen it, I can pretty much guarantee that this movie, indeed, sucks.
Not to get too off track here, but I blame the Waynes Brothers for the never-ending torrent of abysmal spoof movies that were released around 2005 - 2012. "Scary Movie" was far too funny for its own good and in my opinion is the reason that we were later subjected to things like "Disaster Movie," "Meet the Spartans," and "Epic Movie." If you've seen any of these films and find them funny you should do us all a favor and jump off your favorite bridge.
But I digress.
There have been, of course, plenty of "Dracula" adaptations over the years, but the 1992 movie, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," is one of the only ones to truly stay the course of the novel, or at least from the ten minutes of research I did prior to writing this.
And after sitting through the nearly two and a half hours of this movie, it's a bit of no surprise that many of the adaptations strayed off script. This movie is just really weird. And boring.
The story meanders a bit but the general gist is that a barrister had visited Dracula and returned to London completely crazy and was confined to an insane asylum. In the opening minutes of the movie (after a flashback to the 1400s where we meet a young Dracula and his wife), the replacement barrister Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is sent to Transylvania to secure a land deal with the very odd Dracula. Upon his arrival, Dracula notices from a photograph that Harker's very lovely fiance Mina (Wynona Ryder) is the spitting image of his long-dead wife.
 |
| "I uh...love what you've done with the place." |
To be honest, I kept getting lost in the incredibly strange imagery and odd decisions that Francis Ford Coppola took time and time again in this movie. Wait, Francis Ford Coppola? Yes, that's right. Hard to believe that the same person who made "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" also directed "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
Eventually, Dracula seduces Mina's friend Lucy while transformed as a wolfman and infects her with his vampire blood. I guess this is such a turn-on to Mina that she also falls in love with Dracula and decides to let him turn her into a vampire too. Or something. I really had a hard time following what was going on for many parts of this movie.
 |
| Just a little wolf on woman bestiality |
 |
| You're not supposed to see me before the wedding! |
In the end, Van Helsing and his determined group of followers track Dracula down and nearly kill him before Mina finishes him off.
I...did not like this movie although I definitely learned a lot about the classic version of Dracula that I didn't know before. For instance, Dracula can basically turn into any form he wants - young Dracula, a pack of rats, green mist, a terrifying demon. There are basically no bounds to what he can be. Maybe this will give me a better appreciation for the next episode of "What We Do in the Shadows," which unlike this movie, is spectacular in every way possible.
Just a few other quick thoughts before wrapping this up:
*I came into this expecting a terrible performance by Keanu Reeves and while he's certainly not good in this, he's far less worse than I was expecting.
*Aside from Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman is pretty fucking great in this movie and is genuinely terrifying. He's another actor I wouldn't mind doing a full filmography watch when I'm done with this one. I don't think I actually know what Gary Oldman looks like in real life because I think he takes his movie roles based on how absolutely insane makeup artists often make him look:
 |
| Fuckable |
 |
| Totally fuckable |
 |
| Super fuckable |
BEST PART: Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman are both pretty good in this, particularly Hopkins. He adds some pretty fun comedic parts to an otherwise dreary movie.
WORST PART: Pacing? Keanu's accent?
Box Office Mojo Information: $216 million on a $40 million budget. Holy shit, I'd call that a major box office success, the 12th highest grossing movie of 1992.
Rotten Tomatoes: 71% Critics, 79% Audience - these both seem entirely too high to me.
IMDB: 7.4
My Movie Rating: 4/10. Was this a horror movie? I really don't know, but it was far more weird than scary. Aside by the really outstanding performances by Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, this is just not a good movie.
Keanu Rating: 5/10. Look, he's not good in this but I also think my expectations of him were so unbelievable low that he had nowhere to go but up for me.
Up next: the 1992 movie, "Much Ado About Nothing." I hate Shakespeare and so I'm going to go ahead and guess that I'm not going to enjoy this.
No comments:
Post a Comment