This is easily the worst rendition of Dracula I've ever seen

Rating: 3/10 (31 January 2005)

Ye gads, but where to begin. From the start, I had only rented it because of Oldman and Hopkins, and within ten minutes of viewing I regretted it. It started out well, with the background information on Vlad the Impaler beating the Turks back, but from there something just went wrong, what with the church starting to... bleed. Two words, okay: Sam Peckinpaw. Cut to 1897ish. Jonathon Harker (Reeves) shows up in Transylvania, ready to sell an estate in London to Dracula. Gary Oldman, with a rather disturbing haircut, starts doing odd little things that just don't add up: not showing up in mirrors, crawling down walls, never eating, that sort of thing. Soon, Harker finds himself a prisoner. The good Count has made it to London after killing the crew of the ship (Sam Peckinpaw again!) He starts simultaneously dating Harker's fiancée Mina and murdering Mina's best friend. Somewhere in there Renfield eats some flies. No real importance there, though, since they cut his significant role. The rest of the movie consists of Mina falling for Dracula while her friends try and kill Dracula. All this I could have forgiven if they had just killed Dracula at the end! This was not Bram Stoker's Dracula. Scratch out "Bram Stoker's" from the title and you have a sex-crazed and bloodthirsty version, but as it stands it is nothing less than a complete butchery of Bram Stoker's classic. Cary Elwes was good, Hopkins was cool, Oldman was frankly disturbing but acted well, and most of the others either couldn't act. Avoid.