Dracula 2000

by Daniel Papkin

After reviving the puréed teen genre with the wildly successful Scream trilogy, Wes Craven has now lent his imprimatur to this game but lame attempt to raise the undead. Not his directing or writing talents, mind you, just his imprimatur. The blame for this sucker lies with Patrick Lussier, a director with an undeniable sense of style but little sense of how to spook. Indeed, M. Lussier seems to find his choice of decor and special effects far more interesting than directing his charges or telling a story.

Not that there's much of a story to tell. A wizened Christopher Plummer plays famed vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing. Yes, horror buffs, that Van Helsing. He is alive in the year 2000 due to his frequent injections of the blood of the vampire (Dracula, underplayed by Gerard Butler) he keeps locked in the basement of his London antiques dealership. When some foolhardy felons mistakenly abscond with the coffin, that vampire hijacks both their souls and the plane in which they are transporting him.

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Like any night owl with a taste for intoxicating fluids, he heads for Mardi Gras. Not for the beads and boobs, but because Van Helsing's lovely daughter, Mary (Justine Waddell), lives there. Van Helsing follows the trail of reanimated corpses and is in turn followed by his chiseled assistant, Simon (Jonny Lee Miller). Many battles are pitched. Too few drunken college students are injured in the process.

Despite excellent production design and ultra-luscious henchpersons, the film never escapes that B-picture feel. Nor does it offer any chills beyond the garden variety monster-leaps-into-frame startle. Part of the problem is Gerard Butler's Dracula, who conveys less menace than Deepak Chopra.

The most disappointing element of the film, however, is its third act detour into the relationship between Dracula and Christ. I don't want to give anything away, but according to the movie, Dracula is really a biblical figure whose name is synonymous with betrayal. How he got to Transylvania is not addressed, but once we learn his true identity, his fate is as sealed as his coffin should have been.

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