Dracula Untold

Dracula Untold, released in 2014, is an attempt at a fantasy epic. It seems like in the wake of Lord of the Rings, there was a resurgence in fantasy films, and sadly most of those films all kind of look the same. There a few stand outs in this, like Van Helsing, but for the most part, they are mostly non memorable and have a cheapness to them. They are over done with CGI and honestly boring. Dracula Untold is NOT an exception to this.

The film attempts to tell the back story of how Dracula became a vampire. But what the film actually does, is provides a boring lack luster, viewing experience, that has nothing to set it apart from the hoard of similar films out there. The characters all all boring, the actors are okay, but none that actually did anything to draw my attention at all, and most importantly it made me wish that CGI effects had never been discovered. The effects leave much to be desired, and seemed like they aimed to overwhelm the eyes so that the viewer could more easily fall asleep, or drift off to their phone instead of watching. There is nothing about this film that stands out as in anyway impressive. The film isn't necessarily bad, it just is completely forgettable and dull. I mean I am sure that the film did somethings right, but I will be honest, I watched it two days before typing this review, and the film is so unmemorable that I can hardly remember anything in the actual film.

The film however was a box office success, and the critics gave it mixed reviews. I agree with most of the negative ones, and honestly can't find the energy to find what the good ones were even seeing as positives. If I were to give star ratings this film would be a solid 2. Not the worst thing I've ever seen, but definitely not memorable enough to matter.

I would love to spend more time talking about the effects, or the acting, but honestly they were all too unmemorable to even remember, so why even bother. So I am gonna wrap this one up and let it be short.

Would I recommend this film? Do you have insomnia, then give this bore of a film a try, if you are like me you will get sleepy just thinking about it, and beg for sleep so you don't have to keep watching shitty CGI effects. No, skip this, unless you are a fan of run of the mill crap that seems to look like every other overly CGI fantasy film. This version of Dracula ranks only slightly above Dracula's Curse but far far below Argento's Dracula. Not a film I will be revisiting anytime super soon, but still glad to have it as part of my collection. If you find it, I guess watch it, but don't expect anything too great. I am sure it might even entertain.