Dracula (2020)

Sunday 12 January 2020

BY EMILY


“I knew the future would bring wonders. I never imagined it would make them ordinary.”

LET'S GET IT OUT OF THE WAY: the ending was corny and rushed.

The explanation for the sun was silly and the final resolution not earned. Almost like they began filming before the script was completed and were hoping to come up with something better, and then didn't. If I were them, there would have been less exposition and I would have made the 'moral' about fear of the other. That is why they chose Claes Bang, no? “[T]all, dark, handsome – and other”.

But aside from the last minutes, this may be the best piece of TV I have ever watched. I went in expecting a straightforward adaptation and got a cussing nun and a vampire with lawyers. “Faithful and faithless” is how the creators have described their adaptation, and you can tell it is the case with how they took the time to patch the plot holes of the original material, addressing how a Romanian vampire would end up with an English accent and the fashion sense of an Old Hollywood star. How very like the English, is it not, to not even question why “HELP” would be written in a southeastern European castle!

“It is both an art film about how vampires are the reflection of our own fears and a love letter to the Gothic genre in its effort to make the monster literal.”

DRACULA also has the most 'realistic' (if you will) shape-shifting scene, with the logical gore and nakedness you'd expect from changing skins, and the monster genuinely acts and is treated like something non-human, — his fear of the cross is animal behavior, his hunger for his 'brides' is never mistaken for love or lust, and his attractiveness certainly feels like it is there for bait, not to appeal to a movie audience. It is both an art film about how vampires are the reflection of our own fears and a love letter to the Gothic genre in its effort to make the monster literal.

My favourite scene is the severed-head bouquet-toss to the nuns



Cover art: Manuel Prieto Muriana.

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