An ungainly combination of comic-book history lesson with the tropes of both horror movies and superhero sagas, “Dracula Untold” attempts to provide an origin story for Bram Stoker’s vampire within the context of the life of Vlad Tepes, or “Vlad the Impaler,” the fifteenth-century Wallachian nobleman who fought Ottoman invaders and served as an inspiration to the Irish author. Despite its bipartite character, however, nobody should be encouraged to look to it for either accurate information or genuine thrills.
Luke Evans, looking dyspeptic, plays Tepes (or Dracul, to use a patronymic), who was as a child handed over by his father to the Turkish sultan to be trained to serve among his elite warriors, the janissaries. Now the prince of his Transylvanian realm paying tribute to the new sultan Mehmed II (Dominic Cooper), a childhood friend at the Ottoman court, Vlad is blessed with a lovely wife named Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and a loving son, Ingeras (Art Parkinson), who also narrates the tale. But he’s still a pretty gloomy Gus, and his mood grows grimmer when Mehmed demands that he turn over a hundred youths—including Ingeras—for military training of the sort he once endured himself.
Prodded by Mirena, who doesn’t want to give up her boy, Vlad uses his prowess to dispatch the party of troops Mehmed has sent to get Ingeras, knowing that the sultan will respond with overwhelming force. In a desperate attempt to save his people, he seeks the help of a murderous vampire (Charles Dance) who’s been cursed to live in a Transylvanian cave, chomping on whoever might stumble into his lair, until he can find someone who will voluntarily change places with him so that he can go free again—a sort of earthbound Flying Dutchman. Since vampire status carries with it certain benefits—super-strength, super-speed, and the ability to summon hordes of bats to do one’s bidding—Vlad agrees to a sort of test drive, a three-day period after which he can decline the deal, so long as he’s resisted the urge to drink human blood during that period. But in the meantime he’ll have the special powers to deal with the Turkish menace.
The upshot of this rather curious twist to the Dracula legend is that “Untold” becomes the equivalent of a fifteenth-century superhero tale, with Vlad demolishing a whole army of Turkish troops single-handedly and unleashing clouds of bats to attack his foes while guarding against succumbing to his weaknesses—the lust for blood, of course, but also those old vampire bugaboos, sunlight and silver. Given that, it’s not surprising that the final face-off between Vlad and Mehmed—following Dracula’s rejection by his own people and a sacrifice he’ll have to endure—will be fought in a tent just bulging with silver coins. It’s rather as if a Superman picture had culminated in hand-to-hand combat between the Man of Steel and Lex Luthor in a room full of kryptonite—you have to put your hero at a disadvantage to overcome, after all. Throughout all this it’s also inevitable that Vlad will need to take a sanguinary sip in due course—after all, he has to become the Dracula everyone knows and loves. But rest assured he does so only in the noblest of causes when no other alternative exists. The film adds a postscript showing that Dracula isn’t the only one who’s survived into the present day, perhaps in a pitch for some sort of contemporary sequel. That’s about as likely as a follow-up to “I, Frankenstein.”
Perhaps the filmmakers thought that in such a treatment Dracula would possess the same sort of dark attraction for audiences that Wolverine has managed to win. But the result is actually more like another Hugh Jackman movie, the misfire “Van Helsing”—it’s an overly serious, somber, joyless affair that lacks any sense of humor or exhilaration. The only performer who seems to be having fun is Dance, who camps it up mercilessly as Vlad’s vampire sire, though Cooper has a twinkle in his eye at a few points that suggests he’s familiar with what Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains managed in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Gadon, by contrast, is pretty but pallid, and Parkinson more energetic but fairly generic.
The dour character of the entire affairs is accentuated by Gary Shore’s direction, which is entirely pedestrian, and John Schwartzman’s cinematography, which offers images that are nicely composed but tediously dark. (The optional 3-D format only makes them look ever duller.) Ramin Djawadi’s music goes for Wagnerian power but comes up woefully short.
You might give ”Dracula Untold” credit for at least trying to take a character who’s increasingly become a dusty cliché in a new direction. Unfortunately, that direction proves to be a dead—or is it undead?—end.