Dracula 2000 is a horror flim released in 2000 that was directed by Patrick Lussier. This movie is supposed to transfer the story of Dracula into the setting of a modern teen horror flim. The movie starts off in the year 1897, with Count Dracula's voyage to England on the ship Demeter and his arrival at London. 103 years later, a group of thieves have inflitrated an antique shop called the Carfax Abbey. They entered the antique shop because they were searching for a special kind of treasure that is hidden inside the shop. They found a sealed coffin in the process. Two of the thieves were killed from the traps that were set up the coffin and it lead to the thieves to believe that the coffin was the treasure they were looking for. It was revealed that the person inside the coffin was no other then Count Dracula. The Carfax Abbey is owned by Matthew ,or Abraham Van Helsing, and he has been using vampire's blood through leeches, so that he could find a way to destroy Dracula for good.
During the process where the thieves were on a plane flying back to the United States, one of the thieves manages to open the coffin. The count was released and it was feeding on all of the members and the plane crashed in the swamps of Louisiana. Dracula survived the crash and heads to New Orleans to search for Abraham's daughter, Mary. So, it's up to Abraham and his assistant, Simon, to head for the U.S and try to recapture the vampire.
The first problem I have with the plot is that even though this movie tries to take a different direction on Dracula's origin, but there's nothing there that none of us has never seen before. You're not going to see something new or innovative in the new direction of the story. You're basically going to see stuff that you haven't seen before. Another problem is the movie's atmosphere. Since this is teen horror flim, the movie takes away the gothness and the mood that was in the novel and the other movie version's of Dracula and it just makes it like your standard modern teen horror flim. And it doesn't really fit well at all in a movie that is centering on the ultimate vampire lord. And the last problem of the plot is that I felt that the middle length of the movie, in my opinion, was a bit rushed. All the way from when Dracula attacked the plane to when Dracula turn Mary's roommate, Lucy, into a vampire. I think the middle length of the movie was rushed, so that we could see the ending a little bit faster. So, the story in this movie is not that great.
In terms of characters in this movie, they are pretty much forgetable. None of the characters in this movie serve a purpose to be in your memory banks forever and ever. For starters, Dracula is not portrayed well in this movie. The reason being is because he doesn't really talk that much, in the first half of him being in the movie. Valerie Sharpe, who is a news reporter that becomes one of the brides from Dracula, doesn't really give you a good first impression. I can't describe her first impression very well, but what I can say is that she tries to act differently over other news reporters in terms of personality. But, it's a big failure.
We also don't get a lot of character development on Lucy and Valerie. We don't really get to know hardly anything about those two ladies before they become vampires. But since the middle length of the flim was rushed and since that those two appear in the middle length of the flim, that's the reason why I feel that Lucy and Valerie didn't get a lot of character development over the other characters in this movie. As for characters like Simon, Abraham, Mary, Solina and the thieves, I think that those characters are forgetable.
For the settings of this movie, many of them do look good. Although I have a couple of problems for 2 particular settings. In fact, both settings share this problem, believe it or not. In the scene where you see the driver in the airplane's cockpit, you can tell that the background representing the clouds look so fake. I've seen other movie that can make clouds a bit realistic when you are in the cockpit of an airplane. Movies like Independence Day and X2: X-Men United. But in here, it look likes a wallpaper of a blue sky with clouds. I can tell it looks so fake. The same thing goes from when in the scene when Mary sees Judas Iscariot is hanging. You can also tell that the red sunlight, in the background, looks like a wallpaper. And because with those two issues mentioned, it feels like those two scenes were flimed at a lyric theater.
The acting is not that great. For starters, Jennifer Esposito (the actress that plays Solina) is terrible because her character is from England and she didn't try to put a british accent into her. Not to mention that she performance as a vampire is god awful. The actress that plays Valerie Sharpe, Jeri Ryan, is also not that great. she acts like she didn't be a part of this movie and wanted to go back into finishing her role as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager. christopher Plummer
plays Abraham in this movie. He does an ok job, but he performance isn't something memorable compared to Anthony Hopkins's role as Abraham Van Helsing in the Bram Stoker's Dracula movie, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Gerald Butlet doesn't do a good job for doing the role of Dracula. Reason being is that he is so soft-spoken and it kinda annoys to hear him speak so soft and calm all the time. I really wish he would speak up most of the times. He spoke a little louder once, but I wish he would have done it more. At least, Gary Oldman and Richard Roxburgh were not like that. They were soft-spoken, but they were not like Gerald Butler at all.
I wasn't that impressed with Justine Wadell's performance as Mary all that much. I mean, her problem is almost the same as of Gerald Butler's performance. She takes the whole soft-spoken thing to a new level. Her soft-spokeness ness is worse then Gerald. Vitamin C does a decent job for doing of Lucy, in her human form. But as soon as Lucy becomes a vampire, her performance is like "Oh, god!" There are a couple of actors that do fine jobs for their acting. Actors like Jonny Lee Miller and Omar Epps do a fine job for doing their roles. The soundtrack is pretty good to listen to in this movie. It consits of hard rock and metal tracks from bands like Linkin Park, Slayer, Disturbed, System of a Down and Pantera.
Overall, Dracula 2000 is not a good movie. The story has some flaws, half of the characters and many of the actor's performance's in this movie are crap and that's why this movie should be avoided. If you want to see a Dracula movie, this is not the movie you should watch. You should be better off watching the multiple movie versions of the classic novel or all the other Dracula flims done by Hammer Flims.
5.5 out of 10
Chapter 8:
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