Lives up to the Original Well, Accept a Few Problems

Rating: 7/10 (12 January 2012)

Bram Stoker's Dracula from 1992, a remake of the original from 1931 wasn't a bad remake and ended up been quite faithful to what I liked about the original. Before I get on with the review I will say this: I have never been a massive fan of any Dracula films but I do like the original and this film for what they were. I also think that even if this remake was a nice blend and touch to the original, it was still not what I had expected. The other thing I'll say is that I didn't have many problems, and I did like this version from 1992.
Dracula 1992 basically follows along the same lines as the original plot. A man is near getting married but he is called on to go to Transivania and he meets an unknown fiend named Coutn Dracula who loves blood. When Dracula gets to this man, he pursues in going to London and wishing his soon be wife away with him. A lot of trouble brews throughout England as people get hurt, Dracula gets a new look and a vampire killer/slayer named Van Helsing is on the catch to get him.
The story is all round the same but there are two major differences that I found with this film: The overall atmosphere and feel of this film was really different. They took it to a whole new level as they got well known actors (being Gary Oldman playing Dracula and Anythony Hopkins as the Vampire Slayer), the music was full of dread, costumes and make up was also quite up to date style and the film followed the lines of Gothic and old times (obviously as this film is set in the 18th century). The remake (like the Halloween Remake) was much more longer than the original film itself giving us more detail, back story, and a lot of story.
Gary Oldman was an excellent choice as Dracula. He made this role really creepy, dreadful, loving, romantic-like, soothing but also Gothic. I also loved how they kept the contents of how the vampire(s) must be killed and I liked in general what they did with Dracula's character here. They gave him a lot to do in this film e.g. (his over shadow moving in a direction that he wasn't, the way he can change from a cold blooded creature into a handsome young devil. Anthony Hopkins also did a top notch job on his role and he really bumped the film to it's peak. The other actors were good as well.
The film does suffer with a few problems. They give us a lot of scenes of things happening to people and then the scenes has a black out and we end up seeing that the person is alive or un hurt. I don't know what the director was trying to achieve with some of those weird scenes that I did not understand. It was a little hard to understand what he was trying to get at. But most of the time I got what he was trying to do. It was just the little scenes that I think could have been better.
Overall this remake is quite a faithful remake to the original. If you have seen the original 1931 film but not this. Watch this with an open mind as it is a really good remake. Not the best and it wouldn't rank up with other modern horror remakes such as Dawn of the Dead but it's still good. I just found that it was a totally different film, but worked on it's own well.
Not as good as the 1931 version but I still like it and give it the same score as the 1931 film. 7.5/10