DRACULA UNTOLD, An Interesting Take On The Origin

DRACULA UNTOLD movie review

"Dracula Untold" stars Luke Evans as Dracula, Sarah Gadon and Dominic Cooper. The film is directed by Gary Shore. This is also the first installment of Universal's Monsters Cinematic Universe. (UPDATE: Scratch that. Universal is screwed it up and kept changing their minds on what they wanted. What a shame!!!!) Yes... you read right. Universal is rebooting all the classic monsters into a franchise.

In this vision of Dracula's origin, we learn of how Vlad The Impaler becomes the vampire known as Dracula. And it is a fascinating insight or new vision of how he came about.


It all starts after Dracula's days of being Vlad the Impaler. He's a kinder, gentler Prince who rules Transylvania.

But an invader comes forth, demanding that Vlad give up 1,000 of his kingdom's children in payment to right some perceived wrong. But Vlad declines in a rather specific fashion that will bring doom and war to his front door that he cannot win.

He turns to a vampire he knows of in a far off mountain and asks for his help... for his power. The vampire gives Vlad a taste of his blood, giving Vlad the power of a vampire for three days, of which he will then return to being human. Unless he feeds before those three days are up.

In the meantime, he uses his newfound powers to combat the invaders known as the Ottomans. But as you might have guessed, something takes place that causes Vlad to feed on human blood.

And the rest is literary history, so to speak.

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To be honest, I liked this take on the classic movie vampire. The prince is forced, by loyalty to his people and the love of his wife and child, to make some tough decisions which put him on this path of vampiric destiny, to become the son of the devil, as Vlad puts it.


Evans makes a fantastic Dracula as he has the poise to pull off a powerful and majestic character all at once.

Don't make the mistake of forgetting this is a popcorn fun fantasy film. But with that in mind, it's a fun popcorn movie, giving us a taste of how Dracula came to be.

The one thing I did notice, and sort of hinted at, was that this film version sticks to the historical film version, where Dracula is restricted to the night and goes poof in sunlight. (In the original Dracula novel, when the sun rises, he becomes stuck in whatever form he was in at the time of sunrise.)

If you like this kind of flick, I think you will totally enjoy it. Not to mention, it is the first of Universal's Monsters Cinematic Universe. (Repeat UPDATE: Nah, Universal screwed the pooch on this one.)

I give it a popcorn-7 for sure.

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