I like vampire movies. I like history. So when I first saw the trailer for Dracula Untold, I was a bit excited. It didn’t look like the horrible, sparkly, teeny bopper vampires Hollywood had been force feeding us recently. It looked decent.
The story places Luke Evans in the title character, and brings us back to Transylvania in the middle ages. Loosely interpreting the life events of the real Vlad Dracula. Facing the enslavement of the young boys of his kingdom (including his own son) by the Ottoman Empire, the good, Christian Prince Vlad chooses to become a monster to protect his people, and fight off the Sultans invading Turkish army.
Vlad learns of a man who, through a deal with a demon, became a vampire. The demon tricked the man trapping him in a cave near Vlads kingdom until the vampire could find another to infect with his vampiric curse. Vlad makes a deal with the vampire, and uses the powers he receives to fight off the invading Turks. Vlads deal allows him to return to mortal form if he can resist feeding on blood for 3 days after he has been turned into a vampire.
Luke Evans does a good job portraying the conflict inside the title character. The film is shot beautifully, the story is compelling, and the effects are rather well executed. However, for a Dracula origin story that includes multiple battles with the Turkish army, the gore in this film is almost non existent, and the scares are few and far between. Both of those elements would have been necessary to satisfy true fans of the genre. Universal revealed that they had a big plan to reboot all of their Universal Monsters properties, and reshoots to Dracula Untold shortly after filming where done to make sure this film fit in with that universe. At the UK Premiere of the film, Producer Alissa Phillips hinted that Evans’ character might have a cameo in the planned “The Mummy” film reboot and also hinted at a sequel to Dracula Untold.