Dracula 2000 (2000)

DRACULA 2000
A film review by James Brundage
Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com

Well, it's the holiday season and what better way to celebrate than by sucking everyone dry? No... it's not your neighborhood Christmas Key Party, it's Dracula 2000, a gift to all you horror fans for Christmas.

And it's got all of those earmarks of just about every Dracula, a director no one has heard of (Craven just bankrolled it), a series of barely recognizable actors, and a feeling of having been shelved for about four years… oh yeah, and a bunch of religious undertones so the crew can work through their theological schizophrenia a la Anne Rice.

The film opens in 1892, where we see a ship with all hands dead bound for London and with Aramaic written on the sails. Cut to 2000, when a ragtag band of thieves and morons raid an antiquity dealer's basement because they don't know what's there. Even after seeing fanged skull upon fanged skull and losing two men to booby traps, they decide to take the silver coffin they find out with them and, after good old Vlad the Impaler (Gerard Butler) awakens and vampifies everyone, we wind up in New Orleans.

Of course it's Mardi Gras and ultra-Catholic Goth girl (Justine Waddell) who works at the Virgin Megastore (Can you say product placement?) finds herself the object of Drac's affection. The original vampire hunter (Christopher Plummer) and his assistant (Jonny Lee Miller) hunt Drac, and the assistant is falling for Drac's girl. Needless to say, Vlad ain't happy.

Unlike most horror flicks, which are content at being a splatterfest and accepting of their brainlessness, Dracula 2000 opts to be a Stigmata/lesbian-vampire-flick hybrid which raises more pitiful religious questions than it gives in entertainment value. Although it's set to a metal soundtrack so commercial salespeople hawk it at the door, even half of the horror fans in my audience went away pissed. I probably don't need to tell you at this point, the movie isn't even worth the time in line for popcorn, let alone in the theatre.

With Dracula calling a Goth music video absolutely brilliant and the fact that half of the film either features a Virgin Megastore logo or takes place in the Virgin Megastore, it's pretty clear that Dracula 2000 is a bit more advertisement than art. Sure, most movies these days are complete commercials, but they're also pretty slick -- and Dracula 2000 can't even manage to pull that off. The one thing Dracula 2000 does have is a monopoly on big-screen bloodsuckers for the time being…. But don't despair, horror fans: January is only a few days away, and soon you'll have all the recycled horror you can stomach.

RATING:  **

|----------------------------------|
 \ ***** Perfection                 \
  \ **** Good, memorable film \
   \ *** Average, hits and misses \
    \ ** Sub-par on many levels     \
     \ * Unquestionably awful           \
      |--------------------------------------|

MPAA Rating: R

Director: Patrick Lussier Producer: W.K. Border, Joel Soisson Writer: Joel Soisson Starring: Jonny Lee Miller, Justine Waddell, Gerard Butler, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Jennifer Esposito, Danny Masterson, Jeri Ryan, Lochlyn Munro, Sean Patrick Thomas, Omar Epps, Christopher Plummer, Shane West

www.wescravensdracula.com
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