The Camera Eye

Rating: Null/10 (16 October 2011)

For some reason, very good movies do not catch my eye until much later. That may be because I have been in engrossed in so many movies made before the 1990's.
I have seen Gary Oldman play Dracula several times and will see this horror flick again. The movie deserved the awards it received and I think one reason is the special effects. Not that it had many special effects, it did. Most people think of special effects as the visual eye candy, the behind-the-scenes manipulation and tricks that horror and sci-fi are noted for. Yet in Bram Stoker's Dracula, the camera itself must take credit for the chilling atmosphere and occult crafting found in the film's visual mastery. Screenplay is what I am actually referring to, and the screenplay is what makes the movie so strong in its intent to transfer a ghost story into reality.
My prejudices in actors being what they always are, Anthony Hopkins is my candidate for the most credible supernatural expert on Nosferatu. It's interesting and possibly very unique that the actor plays the somewhat eccentric but intelligent physician but also a priest as well as a narrator. Van Helsing gives the movie what all dramatic movies what I call a wealth of humorous injection. Whether you or I give any credence to the occult or the supernatural, the circumstances surrounding the profound interplay between the living and undead, it is lighthearted to hear a doctor say "I just want to cut off her head and put a stake through her heart".