Did Dracula just peak ? Dracula isn't the greatest franchise, but this movie just maxes out every aspect about Dracula that could possibly get interesting. The tale of seafaring Odysseus who strands on a mysterious island, fights a one-eyed giant, and withstands the singing sirens tied to a mast, has been out for 2000 years. And someone goes: we need another movie about an Undead Bloodsucker. And absolutely smashes it. I love the theme of self-sacrifice (only second to Star Wars: Rogue One), the main actor, the stunning visuals with swarms of bats. When I watched the movie for the first time, I wasn't actually surprised how good it was. I was more surprised that I seemed to have missed a whole franchise. The producers made this movie like naturals. 'Of course, this would be a Dracula. Of course, this is what his existence would feel like. It just hasn't been shown, yet.' So that's the REAL Dracula. Awesome.

When I first saw this advertised on tv it got me intrigued however I left it nearly 10 years to watch unfortunately I lost out on the hype of this movie. I really enjoyed this movie, it had a lot of action and some decent battle scenes. I do think Luke Evans played a great lead role and really made himself powerful in the role, however I do think a lot of the side character's were pretty bland, and useless although I understand why they had to be there. I did like Charles Dance as the main vampire who gives Dracula his powers I thought he played the role Great like all of his roles. I would recommend as a stand alone movie but could've been set up to a sequel.

I remember the 1992 version of Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola and thinking that the best part of that version was the anti-heroic Prince Vlad defending Europe against the Ottoman invasion . I do believe there is a market for a historical epic featuring the true life story of Vlad the impaler . This version from 2014 does come close to it in some ways but let's be honest and say no one is going to watch any movie with Dracula in the title unless it features a vampire in the title role and one wonders how many people might have been disappointed by the marketing if not the title alone ?

One group of people who will be bitterly disappointed will be Turks . While the Persians are still recovering from their portrayal in 300 and its sequel the Muslim Turks might have just been lured in to a sense of false security after MIDNIGHT EXPRESS but low and behold along comes DU . The Turks aren't painted in a good light and one wonders if there might be a rather dubious subtext when the Sultan demands a thousand boys for his army ? That said at least Vlad himself isn't a noble traditional type of nationalist hero and the film does show him struggling against internal dilemmas . It's not really an actors type of character driven cinema but Luke Evans is suitably brooding while best performance is Dominic Cooper as Mehmed who doesn't appear on screen often enough here and is probably the film's trump card

DU isn't a masterpiece and again it's very important that you go in to this film with the knowledge it's more of a dark sword and sorcery type tale rather than a horror movie . It wasn't until after I saw it that I found out Universal Pictures might be using it to do a reboot of their monster franchise from the 1930s and 40s which explains the ending that jars with the rest of the movie . Do we genuinely want another reboot series ? As it stands this version of Dracula is more than adequate and maybe we should let Eastern European vampires stay dead