Reviews Film / Bram Stokers Dracula

An enthralling gothic spectacle that reneges on its promise.

I'd heard appealing things about this film, but waited until I'd read the book and seen the Universal movie(s) before watching this.

At the start of the film, I was excited. There's backstory to Drac losing his wife and renouncing God, but that was fine. The first act plays out pretty dang exactly like the book, with some fantastic spooky atmosphere and creepy visual effects that capture and often heighten the mood of the same scenes from the book. Dracula's eccentric costume still adheres to his description as a weird old guy and the tone is about right. Much else in the film is markedly faithful as well, all with a marvelous operatic campiness and vintage film style that make it the perfect tone and a visual treat. This film feels like all of Gothic horror in one movie, and pays homage to other famous Dracula films all wrapped into something more textually accurate. Some characterizations, like Lucy and Van Helsing, are different but still interesting, and Van Helsing himself just felt right. The film also makes the "vampirism=STD" angle extremely clear. There's a lot of titties in this film, but it's (mostly?) portrayed for horror. The hints of sapphism in the film don't add anything, though.

The film ceases to truly be Bram Stoker's Dracula once Mina comes into play. In this film, Mina is the maybe-reincarnated wife of Dracula and his presence in the story is now a tragic romance where he seeks to seduce her.

The movie cannot reconcile this narrative turn no matter how hard it tries. For all else that goes on faithfully to the book, it is impossible to accept a perverted holy crusader and rapist analogue wooing her. At least, not if Mina goes for it.

Mina's character is shredded by this film. While she was a pretty admirable force in the book, here, all of her best qualities are gone. She is not a team leader and sharp mind, and instead she is either not in control of herself or willingly unfaithful to her partner, and either way, it makes her feel pretty grossly written. Either she's deprived the right to be her own person through the distasteful "reincarnated monster's lover" trope that's surprisingly common, or she has agency and uses it to love a monster she has no reason to love, at the expense of her husband and her best friend's memory. The film seems ambivalent if this is the grim story of an obsessive misogynist manipulating somebody until she finally breaks free or if it's the romantic tale of a woman who redeems a monster who is oddly excused for motivations that aren't actually sympathetic. It's hard to like Mina and baffling that Dracula is posed as exempt from the rape analogue only for her—how the hell are we supposed to compartmentalize what he did in other scenes with the romance stuff?

I love the style of this film, but its biggest changes do not work and betray the title.