{"id":2363,"date":"2014-10-13T21:26:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T04:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2363"},"modified":"2014-10-13T21:26:04","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T04:26:04","slug":"dracula-untold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2014\/10\/13\/dracula-untold\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula Untold"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dracula<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: Gary Shore
\nStarring: Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Art Parkinson, Charles Dance, Diarmaid Murtagh, Payl Kaye
\nRated: PG-13 for intense sequences of warfare, vampire attacks, disturbing images, and some sensuality<\/p>\n

Vampires are nothing new. Dracula in particular is nothing new. \u201cDracula Untold\u201d gives us an entire film of what we saw only briefly in Francis Ford Coppala\u2019s version of the famed vampire\u2019s life: the (rather brief) mortal life of Prince Vlad III \u2013 the national hero who saved his people and became a monster. This is definitely not a film for scholars of the historical Vlad, but if you know a little and are interested in another take on the vampire flick, it will sate your appetite.<\/p>\n

Vlad (Luke Evans) has brought peace to his homeland, returning after years as a warrior-slave to the Turks to take the throne. All too soon, however, the Turkish sultan demands a thousand young boys to be trained as warrior-slaves, including Vlad\u2019s young son. When Vlad refuses, it is essentially an act of war, and before long the Sultan and his vast army are on their way to Vlad\u2019s castle.<\/p>\n

Desperate to find a way to save his people, he turns to the most powerful being in his land: an ancient vampire. His powers are astonishing, and include some very neat special effects and epic battles between Vlad\u2019s powers and the Turks \u2013 but of course, there\u2019s a catch, and Vlad finds himself hungering for the blood of his own people, including his beloved wife Mirena (Sarah Gadon).<\/p>\n

The plot isn\u2019t terribly original, and if you\u2019ve seen even one or two vampire movies you will probably spot each twist before it happens. But then, half the fun with this kind of film is seeing exactly how the filmmakers put the characters through the familiar paces.<\/p>\n

Evans and the other actors do solid work, especially given how much of their acting was likely done in front of a green screen or via motion capture. None of the characters are terribly complex or challenging, but the performances don\u2019t slide into camp except when appropriate, and there\u2019s very little metaphorical scenery chewing.<\/p>\n

The action sequences alternate between creative and chaotic. When the special effects are getting shown off, we get nice long shots of well-choreographed action, but otherwise it\u2019s the standard up-close-and-blurry sort of shot. It\u2019s annoying to those of us who really dig fight choreography, but it does save time and money. It also avoids much in the way of gore, so the film can keep its wide-audience PG-13 rating.<\/p>\n

Really, whether or not you want to see \u201cDracula Untold\u201d depends on how much you love vampires \u2013 and not the pretty ones from \u201cTwilight,\u201d the ones that are corpse-like and actually (sometimes) scary. It\u2019s almost a relief to see a film with \u201cDracula\u201d in the title that includes nods to both history and Stoker without pretending to be either historically accurate or a close retelling of the novel. If you\u2019re not a vampire fan or fond of faux-medieval films like \u201cHansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters,\u201d this is not a movie for you; if you love Dracula and his ilk, and thought the previews looked pretty sweet, check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vampires are nothing new. Dracula in particular is nothing new. \u201cDracula Untold\u201d gives us an entire film of what we saw only briefly in Francis Ford Coppala\u2019s version of the famed vampire\u2019s life: the (rather brief) mortal life of Prince Vlad III \u2013 the national hero who saved his people and became a monster. This is definitely not a film for scholars of the historical Vlad, but if you know a little and are interested in another take on the vampire flick, it will sate your appetite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[57,32],"class_list":["post-2363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-rated-pg-13","tag-vampires"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Dracula-Untold.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-C7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2365,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions\/2365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}