Oddly enthralling yet hopelessly boring in certain places.

Rating: 7/10 (29 February 2004)

When I saw Dracula I went in not having read the book or knowing the story at all. That was probably a mistake. This is a movie that's extremely difficult to follow if you go in blind, not knowing the history. Therefore, there are many places where you won't really know what's going on if you don't know the history of the story.
In spite of that, and in spite of the flaws in the film, I did mildly enjoy this-even though I felt oddly lost at many times throughout the movie. The cinematography, as mentioned by many before me, is simply enthralling-richly gorgeous sets, breathtaking photography, the movie succeeds in setting the dark Gothic tone of the movie-on a scale of 1 to 10 the movie gets a 10 in that respect.
However, the reason I enjoyed this wasn't the scenery. Rather it was the almost hypnotic chemistry between Oldman and Ryder which has got to be among the strongest I've ever seen on screen. the scenes between them are so luminously beautiful, you kind of go through the whole film just to see the two of them on screen together. The casting of these two in the main roles definitely produced movie magic-when Rider utters the line"take me away from all this death" I got shivers down my spine. Both of them gave Oscar worthy performances. But it was the on screen chemistry between them that singlehandedly fueled the movie and made it what it was.
In spite of that, though, there were so many flaws to the movie I couldn't give it above a 7. There was a muted quality to the sound, at times it was hard to understand what anyone was saying. Likewise, there was a choppiness through many of the scenes, a lack of smoothness that as I mentioned makes the movie extremely difficult to follow and frankly when Rider and Oldman are not on the screen the movie is at times boring. I wish the movie had flowed more smoothly then it did,and had been a bit shorter, in spite of those flaws there is an enthralling beauty about the film which Rider and Oldman deserve a lot of the credit for. My rating is 7 out of 10. A good movie with some great moments-but not perfect.