Visual Masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2004)

Spoilers within.
Eye-popping grandeur mark this version of Dracula. The atmosphere and the costumes are fantastic, giving a look so realistic it pulls the audience into the film. The same can be said for the make-up effects, which are truly scary at times. The transformation of Dracula from an ancient man who looks as though the dust he is made of is about to return to the floor, to a batlike creature, to a sadistic wolf-man monster shows what can be gone without the overuse of computer graphics.
The acting is passable in most cases, even superb in some. Anthony Hopkins is an ideal Van Helsing, reciting the oddest phrases as though they were perfectly natural. He embodies the quirky but righteous character so well remembered from the novel. He is a worthy adversary to Gary Oldman's count. Oldman gives Dracula humanity as a lost and lonely immortal who misses and is trying to find love. The only really poor acting comes from Keanu Reeves as Johnathon Harker. His accent is distracting, and he reads his lines rather than making them interesting.
The story deviates widely from the book at times, but not to its detriment. It is fascinating to watch Dracula trying to find the love he misses so much, the woman who killed herself when she thought he had died, as revealed in the opening flashback.
This version is not for the faint, being frightening in places and intensely sexual, but it is a work of art.