A different way of telling a story

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Warning: the actual plot of the film has very little to do with Bram Stoker, Universal, or Hammer films aside from recycling the character names. That may or may not be a disappointment depending on whether you are tired of the same old tropes or want to see them done one more time with Argento's trademark visual style.Speaking of which - the photography and scene design roll over your visual inputs like melted butter. Every scene, every shot is just drenched in color and detail. Sometimes I wanted to do a screen capture of a scene and frame it on a wall of my house. So that alone made me feel as if I got my money's worth and spent my time in a worthwhile manner.On the other hand...well, on the other hand, some of the dialog is risibly bad. And some of the acting (including 70-80% of what Asia Argento does) is clunky and wooden. I'm willing to overlook some of this in a film where the lines are probably dubbed...but there are an awful lot of clunkers here that detract from the film. Casting: the actor playing Dracula was an interesting choice and had some visual appeal, but seemed too calm and sedate for the part. That might have just been an effect of the way the character was written. Gerard Butler had the same problem in a previous Dracula movie - they just didn't frame the actor in a way that best framed his strengths. This actor doesn't ruin the movie by any means, but he isn't Christopher Lee. You don't spend all the down time between his scenes holding your breath for his next appearance. As I mentioned, the plot's all over the place and doesn't really have a lot of momentum and sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense. The editor also tends to stick in short scenes and shots here and there that either stop the movie cold or else disrupt the flow. I'm not sure I got to see the best version of the movie, either - for instance, Dracula's spy/henchman Zoltan is made out to be a pretty ruthless bad ass in three different scenes, but Hauer/Van Helsing dispatches him in about 5 seconds. And did I mention that Hauer/Van Helsing only appears after more than 1/2 the film has gone by? Oh, well. It was worth seeing once in the DVD player on a Tuesday afternoon when I was under the weather and unable to go to work.

If want to see a really scary movie then see this movie. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. It is not a 3.6. It has a lot of suspense. It very underrated. This is a great remake. It is so scary. It is one of the scariest movies of all time. Dracula (1992) is a little bit better. So is Dracula (1931) is also a little bit better. Nosferatu (1922) is also better. Thomas Kretschmann is a great actor. Bram Stoker was a great writer. See this movie. It a great movie. Rugter Hauer is a great actor. This is one great movie. It is a 9 not a 3.6. See this great film if you get a chance. It really is one of the scariest movies of all time.

The dubbing, the casting, the acting, the effects, the goofy score. It's worse than you think, even if your expectations were low to begin with.But there is one element that's fairly interesting, that makes it a damn shame that the execution was so abysmal: A lot of the characters share more than a little history. In this version, Harker isn't a guest, but Draculas librarian. The Renfields character knows Draculas bride, Tanja, before she turns into a vampire. In turn, Tanja is set up as a real rival to Mina Harker later. Yes, Draculas bride does have a name and an agenda. And instead of unnamed gypsies, Dracula has a strongman working for him (as well as a pact with a few other citizens). Lucy is a piano teacher, and when she turns into a vampire and kidnaps a child, it's not just a child - but her own pupil. Going further, Dracula believes that Mina is his dead wife (it seems to be going into "The Mummy" territory here), and van Helsing knows Dracula from a previous encounter. Of course, most characters are killed off effortlessly in the last act. And that's where the movie disappoints the most: It sets out as a character-driven Dracula movie, and then it suddenly comes to an abrupt end.

I'm quite shocked at these reviews. How can anyone justify a comparison between this and the Hammer version? The Hammer version was miles better. This looks like a PBS quickie with amazingly bad CGI. It is dull, the sets are uninspired, the acting superbly bad and the directing atrocious. You have to be a die hard Argento fanatic to make your way through this amazingly poor and unfaithful video. As mentioned the mantis scene is just bizarre, and I don't know if he was trying to make this silly or what. Giving this a good review makes me very confused as to where these people are coming from. This in no way hearkens back to the 70's or 80's, so either pop in Coppola's version or Horror of Dracula and spare yourself the trouble.