DIRECTOR
Patrick Lussier
SCREENWRITER
Joel Soisson
PRODUCERS
W.K. Border
Joel Soisson
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Peter Pau
MUSIC
Marco Beltrami
EDITORS
Peter Devaney Flanagan
Patrick Lussier
CAST
Gerard Butler (Dracula)
Christopher Plummer (Van Helsing)
Jonny Lee Miller (Simon)
Justine Waddell (Mary)
Jennifer Esposito (Solina)
Omar Epps (Marcus)
Colleen Anne Fitzpatrick (Lucy)
Jeri Ryan (Valerie)
Sean Patrick Thomas (Trick)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 99m
U.S. release: December 22, 2000
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
See also:
- Wishmaster
(also "presented" by Wes Craven)
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The following
is not really a review, which is fitting, since Dracula 2000
was never screened for critics prior to release. Rather, it's
an email I sent to a friend, writing in a mood of extreme disgust
and disbelief after having sat through the DVD. Read on...
To: K.S.
From: Rob
Subject: 99 minutes of shit
We're talking 5,940 seconds
better spent doing anything else under the sun, including but
not limited to pulling out one's toenails one by one. We're talking
a cinematic experience not unlike having someone open the top
of your skull and fart all over your brain. We're talking one
of the stupidest horror movies in the history of horror movies.
We're talking Dracula 2000.
Wes Craven presented this.
Wes Craven also presented Wishmaster,
if you recall. Wes Craven should never be allowed to present
anything ever again. To borrow a joke from Siskel, if
Wes Craven presented the lost footage from The Magnificent
Ambersons, it would still suck. Not to slam Craven
as a director of his own films -- Dimension is whoring his name
to sell shitty horror movies. I really hope he has nothing more
to do with these movies than sitting in on a couple of meetings.
This isn't a remake, as you
may have heard. It's a modern-day Dracula story. The third-billed
Gerard Butler makes probably the least impressive Dracula since,
I don't know, ever. He looks like a guy who works in a
bowling alley part-time.
I'm gonna go into detail about
the movie's stupidness, so if you don't want spoilers, save this
for after you've suffered through this Panavision smegma, then
come back here for laughs.
We open with a recreation of
Dracula's landing at London, with all the crew members on the
ship dead. This will later be reiterated. After the credits we're
in London, present day. Dr. Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer),
who's still pissed because Bram Stoker made his ancestor look
like a nutcase in his book, runs some sort of antiques dealership
in Carfax Abbey. His assistant is Jonny Lee Miller, who gets
top billing, because he was in Trainspotting.
He has another assistant, Jennifer Esposito, who distinguished
herself as eye candy in Summer
of Sam, and that's basically all she is allowed to be
here.
Jennifer is secretly in cahoots
with a bunch of high-tech thieves (led by Omar Epps), who break
into Carfax and make off with the weird coffin they find in Van
Helsing's vault, but not before a couple of their number have
been impaled on traps. They take a plane back, but Dracula busts
out of the coffin and vampirizes everyone aboard and lures Jennifer
to become one of his vampire bitches. The plane crashes in New
Orleans. Jeri Ryan, the Borg chick from Star Trek, reports
on the scene with her cameraman. Camera guy gets killed, Jeri
becomes Vamp Bitch #2.
Meanwhile, some Sarah MacLachlan-looking
British chick is having nightmares about Dracula. Her roommate
is Colleen Anne Fitzpatrick, better known to the kids as pop
singer Vitamin C. (They really went for the MTV demographic
on this one.) They both work at a Virgin Records superstore,
providing a lame bit of cleverness when Dracula first has a vision
of British Chick and she's wearing her "Virgin" shirt
from work. Ha ha.
Meanwhile, Dr. Van Helsing
jets over to New Orleans after he conveniently sees Jeri's news
report on the plane crash and recognizes the coffin amidst the
wreckage. The "bodies" from the crash are left at the
town hall (I guess because if they were taken to the morgue,
as in most non-stupid movies, they'd be quickly drained and dissected
and left with very little vampire potential). Jonny Lee follows
Van Helsing to the town hall. Cue vampire attack. Our heroes
have nifty anti-vamp hardware, including a gun that fires silver
spikes. In a really idiotic shot, Jennifer seems to leap away
from her attackers into a sunbeam -- uh, excuse me? sunbeam?
sun + vampire = sizzle? -- but a few shots later we see
it's night outside, so we have no idea where this sunbeam-looking
light is coming from.
We find out Van Helsing is
the Van Helsing, kept alive all these years by injecting
himself with Dracula's blood, which he gets from leeches that
he put on Dracula's body in the coffin. (Why didn't he just drain
all of Dracula's blood in one whack? I dunno.) We also learn
that British Chick is his daughter and Dracula is drawn to her
because she was born with his blood in her. He visits the Virgin
superstore and all the teen girls get wet just looking at him
(okay, that's pretty funny, I'll give it that much).
He meets Vitamin C, does the
meat-slap with her, and turns her into Vamp Bitch #3. So now
we have three babes as vamp bitches, but if you see a picture
of them on the web somewhere you've pretty much seen all there
is to see (except for brief nudity by Vitamin C). They swoon
around slowly like Drusilla and act slutty and sarcastic. They
have lots of lame one-liners. So does Jonny Lee, who after fending
off the vampire Omar delivers one of the saddest lines in any
movie ever: "Don't fuck with an antiques dealer."
There is no Renfield figure
here. Jennifer is the closest we get, and she gives maybe the
best performance because she's very into being a vampire bitch.
She may be worth watching in the future.
Oh, and somewhere in here Van
Helsing gets killed and is found stashed under a bed somewhere.
"Hey, Mr. Plummer, you wanna do this shitty Dracula movie
and end up dead under some bed?" "Sure."
Oh, and somewhere else in here
there's the worst acting since Ed Wood was alive, in a scene
where Jennifer is in jail (this is her almost-Renfield moment)
and Dracula arrives to bust her out. He's about to kill some
doctor who happens to be there, and the guy playing the doctor
has the most ridiculous overstated "oh God please don't
kill me" expression I've seen in any movie ever.
Remember that craptastic Keanu moment in the Coppola
film when he sees the vamp bitches start to feed on the
baby and he goes "Noooooo!!! Aaaaaaagh! NOOOOOOO!!"
That was subtle compared to this.
Oh, and somewhere else in here
there's a scene where British Chick gets a phone call from undead
Vitamin C who's somewhere in the house. I couldn't help it, I
just said aloud "What's your favorite scary movie?"
All that's missing is the Jiffy Pop.
Dracula has the ability to
command the elements as well as fog machines and CGI. He turns
into wolves and bats. There's a fair amount of wire-fu in the
climax -- what is this, Crouching Vampire, Hidden Crucifix?
(Actually the cinematographer on this was Peter Pau, who also
did CTHD.
Two David Cronenberg regulars, set designer Carol Spier and costume
designer Denise Cronenberg [yeah, his sister], are also credited
here. I pity Dave for probably having to sit through this shit
just because two of his posse worked on it.)
People get thrown across the
room a lot. People get thrown through windows equally frequently.
British Chick lets herself be vamp-ized by Dracula, but not really.
She finds out the only way to kill him is to hang him by the
neck from a large neon cross (I think Joel Schumacher told her).
This occurs. He dies. The sun comes out and the film crew sets
fire to a stiff-looking Dracula dummy on a rope.
What really sucks is they actually
had a decent idea to rework Dracula's origin. Here we're told
that Dracula is really none other than ... Judas Iscariot. Hence
his loathing for the cross and anything silver. (Doesn't explain
why sunlight hurts him, though.) It's a cool Twilight Zone
twist ending but it comes at a price of 99 minutes of peanut-filled
shite.
With the aforementioned three
technicians at work, this is a good-looking film. It's not terribly
directed either; longtime Craven editor Patrick Lussier does
okay. It's the script, by some guy named Joel, that takes the
pipe. It's way too transparently "Let's do Dracula
for teenagers."
Really bad. Don't be tempted.
If you've read this far, either you've already seen it or you've
decided not to. I hope for your sake you've decided not to. Stoker
is spinning in his grave. The lamest episode of Buffy
is Kurosawa compared to this.
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