The movie is the latest multiplex filler to co-opt a classic tale only to drown it in computer-generated murk. Even the title has the ring of something created by committee.
Neither Shore nor Evans can do much with Vlad's internal wrestling over good and evil, mostly because the writers have refused to define the struggle with a realistic psychology.
The idea is to humanize one of the most fearful monsters in the Western crypt. But Dracula Untold goes way overboard, past domestication and into canonization.
ReelViews
October 09, 2014
A generic vampire tale in the Underworld vein that comes closer to the infamous Van Helsing than a memorable re-interpretation of a legendary monster.
Toothless, poorly scripted and drowning in an overload of pointless CGI, Dracula Untold just plain sucks, both as a medieval epic and as the supposed launching pad for a new generation of movie monsters.
It contains some interesting visuals, great sound editing, and a decent score by Game of Thrones' Ramin Djawadi. However, as a villain origin story, which it purports itself to be, Dracula Untold is an absolute failure.
[Evans] carries Untold by admirably fulfilling the two essential functions of a period-movie hero: to enunciate comic-book dialogue with Shakespearean authority and to look great with his shirt off.
